teredo
Americannoun
-
teredos,
plural
-
teredines
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of teredo
1350–1400; Middle English < Latin terēdō < Greek terēdṓn wood-boring worm
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Matters reached crisis-point in the early 1980s, when it was discovered that the enormous wooden piles which hold up the entire structure were infested with teredo shipworm.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2021
Quatrefages proposed to destroy the teredo in harbors by impregnating the water with a mineral solution fatal to them.
From The Earth as Modified by Human Action by George P. Marsh
"She's been under water about two years and I suppose the teredo have digested her upper works by now; but they can be rebuilt quickly and without a great deal of expense."
From Cappy Ricks Retires by Peter B. (Peter Bernard) Kyne
Whilst he was waiting he found the teredo a very amusing companion.
From The Ravens and the Angels With Other Stories and Parables by Elizabeth Rundle Charles
"We are seldom engaged on such a trifling affair as this," replied the teredo; "we eat through ships and piers, and piles made of the hard trunks of oaks."
From The Ravens and the Angels With Other Stories and Parables by Elizabeth Rundle Charles
The seven plagues of California’s piers are fire, ocean storms, fire, old age, civic budgets, ship worms called teredos, and fire.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2024
The park, with a heavily used soccer pitch and riverfront walk, sits on century-old timbers that were riddled with shipworms, or teredos, tiny mollusks that bore into wood.
From New York Times ● Feb. 8, 2011
But now it is time to show another set of teredos, who burrowed and swarmed in the government offices where the principal scenes of our present study took place.
From Bureaucracy by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
The piles that supported the wharves often needed renewing, being eaten by teredos.
From Out of the Triangle: a story of the Far East by Mary E. (Mary Ellen) Bamford
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
