Meaning

noun the act of wiggling

verb to move in a twisting or contorted motion, (especially when struggling)

originFirst recorded 1690's, originally used of eels; cognate with Scots squimmer (“to wriggle, squirm”). Of uncertain origin. Compare dialectal quirm, whirm (“to disappear quickly, vanish suddenly and mysteriously”), Norwegian kverva (“to turn around, take away, remove, shrink”), from Old Norse hverfa (“to turn, vanish”). Alternatively, perhaps imitative or related to worm (in the sense of writhing…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0