squirm

First recorded 1690's, originally used of eels; cognate with Scots squimmer (“to wriggle, squirm”). Of uncertain origin. Compare dialectal quirm, whirm (“to disappear quickly, vanish suddenly and mysteriously”), Norwegian kverva (“to turn around, take away, remove, shrink”), from Old Norse hverfa (“to turn, vanish”). Alternatively, perhaps imitative or related to worm (in the sense of writhing movement) or swarm.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /skwɜːm/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /skwɝm/

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• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)m

squirm (third-person singular simple present squirms, present participle squirming, simple past and past participle squirmed)

1. To twist one's body with snakelike motions.

   Synonyms: writhe, wriggle

   The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket.

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I, II, or III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     […] around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them.

   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:

     "Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her […]

   • 2011 February 5, Michael Kevin Darling, “Tottenham 2 - 1 Bolton”, in BBC‎:

     The Dutchman then missed a retaken second spot-kick, before the Trotters hit back when Daniel Sturridge's shot squirmed under Heurelho Gomes.

2. To twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment.

   Synonym: fidget

   I recounted the embarrassing story in detail just to watch him squirm.

   • 2010, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content 1686: Twist in the Wind‎:

     MARIGOLD: Should I tell them I know?
     DORA: Nah, let ’em squirm. Let’s go get some pie.

3. To evade a question, an interviewer etc. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

squirm (plural squirms)

1. A twisting, snakelike movement of the body.