How to Use shipworm in a Sentence

shipworm

noun
  • The shipworms could also pick it apart faster than researchers can.
    — Joanna Klein, New York Times, 31 Mar. 2020
  • Most shipworms are sort of beige, or whitish, maybe slightly pinkish.
    — Alan Burdick, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2017
  • The shipworm keeps bacteria in its gills that can digest wood, and steals their enzymes to use in its gut.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 14 Nov. 2014
  • Haygood recalls, until a shipworm the size of a baseball bat lay on the table.
    — Carrie Arnold, National Geographic, 17 Apr. 2017
  • The new shipworm—a thick, white, wormlike creature that can grow to be more than a meter long—lives in freshwater.
    — Alex Fox, Science | AAAS, 21 June 2019
  • The giant shipworm bores through wooden boats, wrecking them and serving as a regular pest.
    — Sammy Nickalls, Esquire, 17 Apr. 2017
  • Unlike other shipworms, Kuphus burrows into mud rather than wood.
    — Alan Burdick, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2017
  • The giant is quite different from another, smaller species of shipworm, a type of clam that burrows into wood, including the wood of ships.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 19 Apr. 2017
  • The two most common borers are a kind of shipworm called Teredo navalis, which is actually a wormlike clam, and tiny crustaceans known as gribbles.
    — New York Times, 13 Sep. 2019
  • Shipway determined a species of naval shipworm called Teredo navalis was likely responsible for eating away the interior of the historic vessel.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Aug. 2022
  • Previous work by the research team on bacteria in shipworms has resulted in at least one antibiotic being investigated as a drug to treat parasitic infections.
    — Meghan Overdeep, Southern Living, 4 Apr. 2020
  • Shipway spent the day Wednesday looking at shipworm samples under a microscope at Harvard University.
    — Brian Amaral, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Previous strains of shipworm bacteria have led to antibiotics that treat parasitic infections in the past, according to NOAA.
    — Andrea Romano, Travel + Leisure, 11 Apr. 2020
  • Rafting crinoids flourished until roughly 180 million years ago, when, some scientists think, the appearance of wood-boring organisms like shipworms drastically curtailed their drifting ways.
    — Raleigh McElvery, Smithsonian, 12 Aug. 2019
  • In the case of the Titanic, the water was much too cold for the most common organic eater, the shipworm, but researchers have still found over 20 different microbes accelerating the decomposition of the ship, Sinclair says.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 13 Feb. 2023
  • When the wood was taken back to the lab, scientists discovered more than 300 organisms and animals living inside the wood, including shipworms, which is a type of clam that has the ability to transform wood into animal tissue, according to CNN.
    — Andrea Romano, Travel + Leisure, 11 Apr. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'shipworm.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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