worm
n.— «In one-day cricket parlance, the services “worm” in Figure 1, which had till then hugged the industry “worm”, surges up and away after 1996/97.» —“Shankar Acharya: If Growth were Slower…?” by Shankar Acharya in New Delhi Business Standard (India) Dec. 28, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The English language has been greatly enriched by borrowings from the languages of Asia. Barely scratching the surface, we have from Japan skosh, tycoon, tsunami, origami, yen, kimono, futon, and karaoke. From Chinese comes yen, kowtow, gung ho, and...
Shuba in Sammamish, Washington, grew up in India, where she heard speakers of Indian English refer to an eggplant as a brinjal. She assumed that this was a British English term, but later realized that in Britain, this vegetable is called an...
While listening to the cricket on the radio the other day, I heard the commentator say “The English [cricketers] are keeping their worm up”.
The worm refers to a graph showing the run-rate (number of runs scored per over, where an over is six balls bowled (pitched)).
Continuing at a constant rate will result in a “flat worm”, but there’s normally an increase in scoring rate near the end of the innings, so the worm creeps up.
The term is also used when a studio audience is asked to reflect their opinions of a political debate in real time. The worm can move towards one candidate or the other depending on the audience’s net impressions of their performance.