squirm

---

Pronunciation

• (British) IPA: /skwɜːm/
• (America) IPA: /skwɝm/

Verb

squirm (squirms, present participle squirming; past and past participle squirmed)

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

   The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket.

   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Chapter IV

     […] 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, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room Chapter 1

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

   Synonyms: writhe, wriggle
2. To twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment.

   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.

   Synonyms: fidget
3. To evade a question, an interviewer etc.

Translations

• French: gigoter, remuer, se tortiller
• German: winden
• Portuguese: serpentear
• Russian: извива́ться
• Spanish: serpentear, retorcerse

Translations

• Russian: поёживаться
• Spanish: avergonzarse

Translations

• Russian: уви́ливать
• Spanish: escabullirse

Noun

squirm (plural squirms)

1. A twisting, snakelike movement of the body.

---

This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004