wormhole
noun
Did you know?
If you associate wormhole with quantum physics and sci-fi, you'll probably be surprised to learn that the word has been around since William Shakespeare's day. To Shakespeare, a "wormhole" was simply a hole made by a worm, but even the Bard subtly linked wormholes to the passage of time; for example, in the poem The Rape of Lucrece, he notes time's destructive power "to fill with worm-holes stately monuments." To modern astrophysicists, a wormhole isn't a tunnel wrought by a slimy invertebrate, but a theoretical tunnel between two black holes or other points in space-time, providing a shortcut between its end points.
Examples of wormhole in a Sentence
Tyler Small, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2025
The size of the ring is also large enough to rule out speculation that M87* is not a supermassive black hole but rather a wormhole or a naked singularity—even stranger objects that appear to be consistent with general relativity but have never been observed.
—IEEE Spectrum, 30 Jan. 2020
Putting them on can be like tasting Proust’s madeleine, sending you down a psychological and emotional wormhole and putting you back in the mental space of an earlier moment.
—Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 20 Jan. 2025
Earth is on the brink of collapse due to environmental degradation, and a mysterious wormhole near Saturn offers humanity a chance to escape.
—Travis Bean, Forbes, 11 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for wormhole
Cite this Entry
“Wormhole.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wormhole. Accessed 28 Feb. 2025.
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wormhole
noun
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