shipworm

Questions about shipworm

What does shipworm mean?

shipworm means "wormlike marine bivalve that bores into wooden piers and ships by means of drill-like shells".

How many syllables are in shipworm?

shipworm has 2 syllables and divides as ship-worm under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for shipworm?

Close synonyms include teredinid. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is shipworm a common word?

shipworm is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.