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
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
Astronauts returning from space say they experience what’s called the overview effect, a new understanding of the fragility of our planet and our need to reflect on what humans all share as a species. A book about the end of the universe...
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).“