Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 2 Jul 2018, 20:51
According to the Oxford English Dictionary worm is from the same root
as Latin vermis worm, and also related to Ancient Greek word ῥόμος wood-worm (the Greeks tended to drop
their 'w's, and presumably at an earlier time the word would have been spelt
with a digamma, ϝῥόμος 'wromos').
So worms were lowly.
But by the time we get to Old English and Old
Norse the word has come to mean (or at it least include) 'dragon'. The OE was wyrm,
that's how the dragon Beowulf fights is described.
Old Norse speakers also tended to drop their
'w's, for example OE Woden is the same as ON Odin. So the dragon Fafnir,
slain by Sigurd, is an ormr.
Both these dragons guarded their
hoards of treasure. It is the theft of a cup from his cache that awakens the
Beowulf dragon, after three hundred years of peace. It wants to catch the
thief. I always find the image of the dragon sniffing after him rather chilling.
Þá se wyrm
onwóc wróht wæs geníwad
stonc ðá æfter stáne
Then the dragon
awoke wrath was rekindled
It sniffed along the stone
Nowadays the word worm has reverted to
something more like its original meaning. The glory days are past: worms cannot
fly, spit poison, or breathe fire, and they don't guard hoards of treasure.
That kind of worm has gone extinct.
The Rise and Fall of the Worm
According to the Oxford English Dictionary worm is from the same root as Latin vermis worm, and also related to Ancient Greek word ῥόμος wood-worm (the Greeks tended to drop their 'w's, and presumably at an earlier time the word would have been spelt with a digamma, ϝῥόμος 'wromos'). So worms were lowly.
But by the time we get to Old English and Old Norse the word has come to mean (or at it least include) 'dragon'. The OE was wyrm, that's how the dragon Beowulf fights is described.
Old Norse speakers also tended to drop their 'w's, for example OE Woden is the same as ON Odin. So the dragon Fafnir, slain by Sigurd, is an ormr.
Both these dragons guarded their hoards of treasure. It is the theft of a cup from his cache that awakens the Beowulf dragon, after three hundred years of peace. It wants to catch the thief. I always find the image of the dragon sniffing after him rather chilling.
Þá se wyrm onwóc wróht wæs geníwad
stonc ðá æfter stáne
Then the dragon awoke wrath was rekindled
It sniffed along the stone
Nowadays the word worm has reverted to something more like its original meaning. The glory days are past: worms cannot fly, spit poison, or breathe fire, and they don't guard hoards of treasure. That kind of worm has gone extinct.