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English
Etymology
The name of a character in the play The Hypocrite (1768) by Isaac Bickerstaffe; from maw-worm.
Noun
Mawworm (plural Mawworms)
- (now rare) A hypocrite.
- 1853 - "Editor's letter box", Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, vol.1 (new series), no.49, p.1090, 9 December 1853
- That there are a sufficient number of Mawworms and Cantwells in the profession, is abundantly proved by the number of signatures obtained to the petition against opening the Crystal Palace on Sundays.
1862 March 15, “Military mawwormism”, in Punch, page 103:So, according to this Mawworm, it is not the play itself but its being acted publicly that is so pernicious.
1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter II, in Middlemarch , volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 30:He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.
1986 December 12, The Ottawa Citizen, page E8:Troublemakers come in splendid variety - from the catamaran, or quarrelsome scold, to the solopsist, or self-absorbed, self-referential me addict; from the blateroon, or compulsive chatterbox, to the mawworm, or pious, mealy-mouthed hypocrite.
References
- OED 2nd edition 1989
- OED online 3rd edition 2010