brainworm


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brain·worm

 (brān′wûrm′)
n.
A small, hairlike, parasitic roundworm that infects the meninges surrounding the brain of large hoofed animals, usually members of the deer family.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Brainworm larvae then hatch out in the new host and work their way through the body.
Based on the gathered data, biologists hope to better understand the cause of death of Vermont's moose, be it predation by coyotes or bears, brainworm infections or stress caused by winter tick infestation.
A concurrent decline in adjacent northeastern North Dakota was investigated by Maskey (2011) who suggested other factors such as brainworm play a larger role in moose mortalities.
Tony Macaroni's brainworm marketing is genius and their radio ads are so annoyingly infectious they make the Welsh opera singer from Go Compare sound like Sam Smith on Valium.
He was infected with the brainworm when he unleashed it on the country.
The play ends in classical fashion as all the characters go in to supper and in the first version Doctor Clement rewards the clever servant Musco, later rechristened Brainworm, by making him lord of the feast and dressing him in the robes of a justice.
"An animal's behavior," he writes, "tends to maximize the survival of genes for that behavior whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it." The classic example involves a parasitic brainworm that burrows into the head of an ant, causing it to climb toward the most exposed portions of leaves and blades of grass until a cow, the worm's ultimate host, consumes it.
That moment when you realise your 10 denier tights have ripped and you haven't got a spare pair is now a tightmare, while the song you can't get out of your head is a brainworm. If you wake up at home after a night out with no idea of how you got there you probably took a magic taxi, or perhaps you were driven by a friend who was drinking non-alcoholic mocktails all night.
And this erasure of their personality, while it lightens Truewit's task, robs the scene of the kind of richness that Jonson achieves when disguised characters like Brainworm or Volpone play themselves at the same time that they are posing as begging soldiers or traveling charlatans.
"I guess the biggest concern that we've got--and one that we don't really have any control over--is the potential for the meningeal worm, or the brainworm, to cause a problem," Maehr said.