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Measuring worm   /mˈɛʒərɪŋ wərm/   Listen
adjective
Measuring  adj.  Used in, or adapted for, ascertaining measurements, or dividing by measure.
Measuring faucet, a faucet which permits only a given quantity of liquid to pass each time it is opened, or one by means of which the liquid which passes can be measured.
Measuring worm (Zool.), the larva of any geometrid moth. They are so called because they move by a process in which they first pull the rear legs forward toward their front legs, forming a loop which resembles the process of measuring with a tape measure. The motion is completed by subsequently moving the front legs forward to an advanced position. See Geometrid.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Measuring worm" Quotes from Famous Books



... changes, no more desirable than the foregoing, which have been caused by the introduction of the house-sparrow. The only positive benefit which occurs to me is that the measuring worm, which formerly infested all our vegetation, is now very nearly extinct through the instrumentality of the sparrows. A pair of these, during the breeding-season, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... freed man did live to get there. And it was an emotion which the warden had never suspected that held life in him all that afternoon and through the comfortless night in the packed and noisome day coach, while the fussy, self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuring worm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the foothills, on and on through the great riven chasm of the gateway into a bleak, bare clutch of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had two bad hemorrhages on the way, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb



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