Definition of "vermin" []

• Various small animals or insects, such as rats or cockroaches, that are destructive, annoying, or injurious to health. (noun)
• Animals that prey on game, such as foxes or weasels. (noun)
• A person considered loathsome or highly offensive. (noun)
• Such people considered as a group. (noun)

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.

• "I prefer the term vermin, but am happy that dictionary.com hooked me up the correct spelling for the former as I had totally blown it on my guesstimate."
• "Another American squatter was always sending over to borrow a small-tooth comb, which she called a vermin destroyer; and once the same person asked the loan of a towel, as a friend had come from the"
• "All the quadrupeds which he met there were foxes, fuppofed by him to have been brought upon the ice; but of ufelefs animals, fuch as fea lions and penguins, which he calls vermin, the number was incredible."