Vermicious knid
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Vermicious knids are a fictional species of amorphous, shape-shifting monsters that invade the Space Hotel USA in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are also mentioned in the 1971 feature film adaptation, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, except on this occasion they are referred to as being one of the species that inhabits Loompaland.
[edit] Description
In their natural form, vermicious knids are huge, dark, egg-shaped beings that are quite at home in the vacuum of space. They attack space vessels by ramming them, pointy-end first. Their homeworld is the planet Vermes.
Their one weak point is that they are show-offs; they cannot resist shaping themselves to spell the one word they know how to spell--SCRAM--before they attack.
According to Willy Wonka, numerous sentient alien species that formerly existed have been wiped out by the knids' predations. Wonka claims that the only reason humans have escaped this fate is because the Knids cannot enter Earth's atmosphere without being burned up by friction—despite the fact that among the worlds that have been depopulated by the knids are Venus (which has a substantial atmosphere) and Jupiter (which is a gas giant).
When Nestle created their interpretation of Wonka's world to sell chocolate bars under the name "Wonka", they released a number of downloadable flash games. In all these games, Knids seem to have entered the factory and have the appearance of a flying green blob with a single red eye.
[edit] Name
The name knid may have been inspired by Cnidaria, the taxonomic phylum containing stinging aquatic invertebrates such as jellyfish and coral, or by the classical Greek word for nettle, κνιδη, from which Cnidaria is itself derived. Alternatively, it could simply be the pejorative "dink", spelled backwards. Vermicious is a real word, meaning wormlike. An alternate hypothesis may be that the word Vermicious and knid are simply misspellings of "Pernicious Kid", which is in keeping with the undercurrent of skepticism of children (and their parents) in the 1971 version, as it can mean "a wicked child".[citation needed]
Pronunciation of knid is said in the book to approximate adding a schwa between the k and nid, or in Dahl's words, "k'nid."
[edit] Other appearances
They are mentioned in another of Dahl's books, James and the Giant Peach, after police see that the peach has landed on the Empire State Building. They are also mentioned in the Dahl's story The Minpins.
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