means A long, soft-bodied, limbless creature that burrows through soil, plus a sprawling family of slithery things and metaphors — from parasites to malicious computer code to the squirming feeling of doubt.

from From Old English 'wyrm,' which once meant far more than the earthworm — it covered serpents, dragons, and any creeping menace, which is why old dragons in myth are still called 'wyrms.' It descends from Proto-Germanic '*wurmiz' and is likely a cousin of Latin 'vermis' (source of 'vermin' and 'vermicelli,' literally 'little worms'). Over the centuries the word shrank from fearsome dragon to humble dirt-dweller, then crawled into computing in the late 20th century to name self-replicating code that wriggles through networks.