wormhole

• worm-hole
• worme-hole (obsolete)

1590s.[1] From worm +‎ hole. In the scientific sense, introduced by John Archibald Wheeler in 1957.[1][2]

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wormhole (plural wormholes)

1. 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.

2. (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.

3. (programming, slang) A location in a monitor program containing the address of a routine, allowing the user to substitute different functionality.

• (a spacetime construct): Einstein-Rosen bridge

• (a spacetime construct): black hole, white hole

wormhole (third-person singular simple present wormholes, present participle wormholing, simple past and past participle wormholed)

1. (transitive) To make porous or permeable through the formation of small holes or tunnels.