What is "bookworm"

Bookworm \Book"worm`\, n.

1. (Zo["o]l.) Any larva of a beetle or moth, which is injurious to books. Many species are known.

2. A student closely attached to books or addicted to study; a reader without appreciation.

   I wanted but a black gown and a salary to be as mere a bookworm as any there.
   --Pope.

1590s (of people), 1855 of insects or maggots; there is no single species known by this name, which is applied to the anolium beetle, silverfishes, and book lice. See book (n.) + worm (n.).

n. 1 Any of various insects that infest books. 2 An avid book reader.

1. n. a person who pays more attention to formal rules and book learning than they merit [syn: pedant, scholastic]

2. someone who spends a great deal of time reading

Bookworm is a popular generalization for any insect that supposedly bores through books.

Actual book-borers are uncommon. Two moths, the common clothes moth and the brown house moth, will attack cloth bindings. Leather-bound books attract various beetles, such as the larder beetle and the larva of the black carpet beetle and Stegobium paniceum. Larval death watch beetles and common furniture beetles will tunnel through wood, and through paper if it is nearby the wood.

A major book-feeding insect is the book or paper louse (also known as booklouse or paperlouse). These are tiny (under 1 mm), soft-bodied wingless Psocopterans (usually Trogium pulsatorium), which actually feed on microscopic molds and other organic matter found in ill-maintained works (e.g., cool, damp, dark, and undisturbed areas of archives, libraries, and museums), although they will also attack bindings and other book parts. The booklouse is not a true louse.

Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907–1916, Augustine Birrell once recounted a situation in which a bookworm had eaten through to the 87th page of a fifteenth-century vellum book. By the twentieth century, modern bookbinding materials thwarted much of the damage done to books by various types of book-boring insects.

Bookworm was a British humoristic comic strip, first published on April 22, 1978 in the magazine Whoopee! and survived Whoopee!'s merger with Whizzer and Chips in 1985, becoming a Chip-ite. It was drawn by Sid Burgon for most of its history, although Barry Glennard drew a substantial number of episodes.

Bookworm may refer to:

• Bibliophile or bookworm, an avid reader and lover of books
• Bookworm (insect), a popular generalization for any insect which supposedly bores through books
• The Bookworm (Bookstore), an independent bookstore in Beijing, China
• Bookworm (Tiny Toon Adventures), a supporting character on the cartoon Tiny Toon Adventures
• Bookworm (comics), a comic strip in the Whoopee!, and later Whizzer and Chips, comic books
• " Bookworm, Run!", a science fiction short story by Vernor Vinge
• Bookworm (video game), word-forming puzzle video game by PopCap Games
  • Bookworm Adventures, follow-up game
• The Bookworm, a painting by German painter Carl Spitzweg
• Bookworm, an American radio show on literature hosted by Michael Silverblatt
• The Bookworm, a BBC weekly television programme on literature hosted by Griff Rhys Jones, 1994 to 2000
• The Bookworm, a villain in the 1960s Batman TV show
• Book Worm, a DSiWare game
• The Bookworm, a 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated short
• The Bookworm, an independent bookstore in East Aurora, New York
• " The Bookworm (short story)", a short story by Pu Songling

Bookworm is a word-forming computer puzzle game by PopCap Games. From a grid of available letters, players connect letters to form words. As words are formed, they are removed from the grid and the remaining letters collapse to fill the available space. As in Scrabble, players earn more points by creating longer words or words which use less common letters and earn less for smaller words. In November 2006, PopCap Games released a sequel, Bookworm Adventures. Bookworm was released for the Nintendo DS digital distribution service DSiWare on November 30, 2009. It has also been released on the regular Nintendo DS cartridge.