tongue worm

9.9

A small wormlike parasite with hooks that lives inside the nose of animals like dogs or cows

noun

Specialized

: gusano lengua

The veterinarian diagnosed the dog with a tongue worm infection in its nasal cavity.

Examples

Researchers studied how the tongue worm attaches itself using its hooks.
Farmers are advised to check livestock for signs of tongue worm infestation.
The tongue worm can cause severe nasal infections.
Many animals, including dogs, can host a tongue worm.
Veterinarians often find tongue worm in the nasal passages of infected animals.
She brought her cat to the vet to check for a possible tongue worm infestation.
The tongue worm can lead to serious health issues if left untreated.

Synonyms

pentastomid

vstongue worm

Specialized

9.9

A wormlike animal with two pairs of hooks by the mouth that lives in mammal noses

is the common name for the same animal

Pentastomida

vstongue worm

Specialized

9.9

Small animals like worms that live inside the breathing organs of animals with backbones

is narrower referring to a specific hooked arthropod in mammal nasal sinuses

Surface Forms

tongue worm singular

tongue worms plural

Morphology

tongue + worm

The compound 'tongue worm' clearly combines 'tongue' and 'worm', so a learner who knows those words would likely infer a worm-like parasite related to a tongue or shaped like a tongue, giving partial semantic cues. However, the actual sense is a specialized biological term (a specific arthropod usually found in nasal sinuses) that is not fully predictable from the constituents, and the input even lacks a definition for 'worm', so the precise meaning would be unclear to an average B1 learner.

Etymology

Tongue worm is named for how the creature looks and where it lives: it is long and worm-like and can look like a small tongue, so people called it a worm near the mouth or nose. That's why tongue worm refers to a worm-like 'parasite' that attaches in the nose or throat.