Earwig

Reference to this insect dates back a thousand years.

The word is derived from the Old English colloquial term for insect, which was wicga.

Pronounced as ‘widger’, this word is thought to have come from the prehistoric Germanic base wig and is roughly equivalent in feeling to the term creepy-crawly.

Many folk used to believe that earwigs would crawl into their ears, especially while they slept, so the Anglo-Saxons called them earwicga, which literally means ‘ear-insect’.

The French word for the little critter is perce-orielle ‘ear-piercer’, whilst the German and Dutch words, ohrwurm and oorworm respectively, both mean ‘ear worm’.

Thankfully though, Pliny the Elder in his Historia Naturalis offered a remedy for the critters crawlings - spitting into the ear to flush out the offender. Ugh!