earworm
Pronunciation: /ˈɪəwɜːm/
The English word “earworm” has 2 meanings listed here.
noun
Etymology
From ear + worm; senses 1 and 3 (“tune that keeps replaying in one’s head”; “earwig”) are a calque of German Ohrwurm (“tune that pops up in one’s memory all the time; earwig”) (from the idea of a creature burrowing into the ear, an erroneous belief where earwigs are concerned), while sense 2 (“moth larva”) refers to the fact that these pests infest, among other things, ears of maize or sweet corn.
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.