Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "vermiculate" []

  • To adorn or decorate with wavy or winding lines. (verb-transitive)
  • Bearing wavy, wormlike lines. (adjective)
  • Having a wormlike motion; twisting or wriggling. (adjective)
  • Sinuous; tortuous. (adjective)
  • Infested with worms; worm-eaten. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "vermiculate" in a sentence
  • "On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming."
  • "Max Baucus's Medicare coverage for people exposed to asbestos in a vermiculate mine in Libby, Montana;"
  • "Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms; — so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality."