The word is not found in any dictionaries (the DEAF entry simply refers to AND¹) and its language and meaning remain dubious. Alternative manuscripts of Alexander Nequam’s De nominibus utensilium gloss the word vermem simply as uuerme, i.e. ‘worm’ (TLL ii 103.156). In this particular early thirteenth-century manuscript (Oxford, Saint John’s College 178, i.e. MS ‘J’) the word is also glossed as evethe, which must be MED evete n.: ‘A lizard; a salamander or newt’. The word is tentatively defined here on the basis of this second gloss.