• vermin •
Pronunciation: vêr-min • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass (No plural)
Meaning: 1. Small animals, insects, and other pests that are a danger to human health, destructive or otherwise bothersome to humans. 2. Predators that prey on farm or game animals. 3. (Offensive) Disgustingly offensive, loathsome, or repulsive people.
Notes: Here is a term that is particularly disgusting when referring to human beings. It comes with three adjectives, verminous, verminly "like vermin" and verminy "infested with vermin". A fourth adjective, vermiform, refers only to worms. Vermin was mispronounced varmint so much in the western US that most dictionaries now carry that spelling as a separate word.
In Play: Any kind of animal or insect pest is liable to attract this label: "Roland found it hard to keep vermin like coyotes, foxes, and hawks away from his chickens." This is a term used often by authoritarians to turn one sector of society against the other: "We will root out the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."
Word History: Today's bad Good Word was nicked from Old French vermin "moth, worm, mite", which meant in the plural "troublesome insects". This word came from Vulgar (Street) Latin verminum, a collective noun (singular noun with plural reference) based on vermis "worm", which Latin inherited from PIE wer-m-/wor-m- "to turn, twist, bend". We find the workings of this PIE word in Dutch and English worm, Danish and Norwegian orm "worm", English -ward, as in forward, German werden "to become (turn into)" and Wurm "worm", Ukrainian Veresen' "September', Russian vertet' "to turn", Serbian vrteti "to spin", Lithuanian versti "to (over)turn, translate", Breton gwer "green" (from a dye made from worms), and Welsh gwyrdd "green".
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