Most people know this word for several meanings I think. The literal:
Wormhole -- The hole made by a worm
But also for it's other term of: a hypothetical structure of space-time that is envisioned as a long, thin tunnel connecting points that are separated in (well) space and time.
Star Trek fans, really any science fiction fans know it by this for sure as scifi is chock full of wormhole references. I tend to use it another way as well. When I get on the internet for one thing, then 30 minutes later I pull my head from the screen wondering how I went from a post on Troll Lord Games Twitter to a life sized statue of Benedict Cumberbatch made entirely of Belgian chocolate. I suppose it's the same way we use rabbit hole from Alice. Either way it happens a lot. Just working on this post I have been to 10 tabs on my browser and only 3 were meant for this post. :-)
This was surprising (from Merriam Webster): You'll probably be surprised to learn that the word has been around since Shakespeare's day - although, admittedly, he used it more literally than most modern writers. To Shakespeare, a "wormhole" was simply a hole made by a worm, but even the Bard subtly linked "wormholes" to the passage of time; for example, in The Rape of Lucrece, he notes time's destructive power "to fill with worm-holes stately monuments." To modern astrophysicists, a wormhole isn't a tunnel wrought by a slimy invertebrate, but a theoretical tunnel between two black holes or other points in space-time, providing a shortcut between its end points.
Wormholes... they aren't just for worms anymore.
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