the.com/slowworm
a legless lizard moonlighting as a snake, fooling everyone but its own eyelids.
means A legless lizard (Anguis fragilis) that looks like a small snake but isn't one — it has eyelids and can shed its tail, and it's actually neither slow nor a worm.
from From Old English 'slāwyrm.' The 'worm' part is the old 'wyrm,' which once meant serpent or dragon, not just earthworms — so it's the same 'worm' lurking in 'wyvern' and in Tolkien's dragons. The 'slow' part is the puzzle: it may come from 'slā,' related to slaying (a snake-killing creature), rather than 'slow' in the sluggish sense — folk later reshaped it into 'slow' because the animal does move at a gentle pace, but that reading is probably a later misunderstanding of an older word.
- actually lizard
- blinks and sheds its tail, unlike any snake
- long life
- can live over fifty years in captivity
- slug hunter
- gardeners adore it for devouring pests
- false name
- neither slow nor a worm, technically
- detachable tail
- drops it to escape, then regrows a stub
anguis fragilis — legless lizard native to europe, can shed tail to escape predators