buzzworm
n.— «Being in the sun, perhaps the bike path was too warm for this 30-inch buzzworm, a pit viper species common to California and known to biologists and Latin scholars as Crotalus viridis oreganos, or Northern Pacific Rattlesnake.» —“Bikepath buzzworm” by winehiker Winehiker Witiculture Sept. 22, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...
Thank you for referencing my post. I first encountered the term “buzzworm” when reading Edward Abbey back in the late 1970s. Here’s a reference to the term in Abbey’s “The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader (1996).“