wormhole
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English
Alternative forms
- worm-hole
- worme-hole (obsolete)
Etymology
1590s. From worm + hole. In the scientific sense, introduced by John Archibald Wheeler in 1957.
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun
wormhole (plural wormholes)
- A hole burrowed by a worm.
- 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, , →OCLC:
- To fill with worme-holes stately monuments.
- 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 36:
- But he had no sooner got through the worm-hole, than the lad put a small peg in the hole.
- (relativity) A hypothetical shortcut between two points in spacetime, permitting faster-than-light travel and sometimes time travel.
- 1957 December, Charles W. Misner, John Archibald Wheeler, “Classical Physics as Geometry”, in Annals of Physics, volume 2, number 6, pages 525–603:
- […] where there is a net flux of lines of force, through what topologists would call "a handle" of the multiply-connected space, and what physicists might perhaps be excused for more vividly terming a "wormhole".
- 1979, Alan Dean Foster, Harold Livingston, directed by Robert Wise, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, spoken by Commander Willard Decker (Stephen Collins):
- Wormhole distortion has overloaded main power systems!
- 2001, Ron Wilkerson, “Red Sky”, in Martin Wood, director, Stargate SG-1, season 5, episode 5, spoken by Captain Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping):
- I think the wormhole that we used to travel here passed directly through this planet's sun.
- (programming, slang) A location in a monitor program containing the address of a routine, allowing the user to substitute different functionality.
Synonyms
- (a spacetime construct): Einstein-Rosen bridge
Related terms
- (a spacetime construct): black hole, white hole
Translations
a hole burrowed by a worm
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a shortcut between distant parts of space
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Verb
wormhole (third-person singular simple present wormholes, present participle wormholing, simple past and past participle wormholed)
- (transitive) To make porous or permeable through the formation of small holes or tunnels.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “wormhole”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
- ^ Misner, Charles W., Wheeler, John A. (1957 December) “Classical Physics as Geometry”, in Annals of Physics, volume 2, number 6, →Bibcode, , →ISSN, pages 525–603