- 1
Full of vermin — that is, crawling with fleas, lice, bedbugs, or overrun with rats and mice. You use it about places and about living things that are in a bad state: a verminous mattress, a verminous cellar, a verminous stray dog. It is a rather formal and old-fashioned word, and it belongs mostly to official reports, health inspections, and older novels; a landlord's letter or a nineteenth-century description of a slum is its natural home. In everyday English people say 'full of fleas', 'crawling with bugs', 'rat-infested'. There is a second, harsher use: applied to a person, verminous is a strong insult meaning disgusting and worthless — the speaker is calling that person a pest, something to be exterminated. This use has an ugly history, since describing whole groups of people as verminous is the language of persecution. So know the word when you read it, and be careful about ever aiming it at a human being.
生蟲的、長滿跳蚤蝨子的；（罵人）惡心如害蟲
組成vermin (small harmful animals or insects — rats, mice, fleas, lice) + -ous (an ending that means 'full of' or 'having'). So: full of vermin.
同家族的字
- verminthe word it is built from
- famousshares the -ous ending meaning 'full of, having'
- vermicellivermin comes from Latin vermis 'worm', and so does vermicelli, 'little worms'
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
verminousadj/ˈvɜː.mɪ.nəs/
- 1
Infested with vermin.
- The old beggar kept a verminous mongrel dog for a pet.
- The dog was constantly scratching his many verminous sores and welts.
- 2
Actively unpleasant, contemptible, or otherwise reminiscent of vermin.
- They had brought all their own equipment with them, trade by trade, tongue by tongue; they travelled in ancient lorries or in slower carts with their verminous armfuls of keen-eyed children.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。