cockworm

English

Etymology

From cock +‎ worm.

Noun

cockworm (plural cockworms)

1. (Bermuda) A type of large marine worm, Arenicola cristata, used for fishing bait.
   • 1954, Travel Magazine, volume 102, page 6:

     A light glass rod is best, and for bait the Bone seems to like, more than any thing, the Green or Cock worm.

   • 1979, Nellie Eileen Musson, Mind the Onion Seed: Black "roots" Bermuda: Presented During Bermuda's First Heritage Week, May, 1979:

     After my second illness, being too old for “piggy-back rides”, I generally sat in 'Resting Nuke' on a seat naturally formed in a low branch of a cedar, watching relatives down in the bay with pitchforks furiously digging out long black slithery "cockworms" from the muddy sands of Sinky Bay.

   • 2016 April 2, “Surprises waiting beneath the waves”, in The Royal Gazette‎^[1]:

     Old-timers will say that you have to use cockworms, but while the use of bait might be preferable to any artificial lures, bonefish will definitely take bits of fish or shrimp and the good old standby, a piece of squid, will also elicit a bite from the grey ghost.