Vermicious knid
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Vermicious knids are a species of amorphous, shape-shifting monsters which 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. 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 one weak point is that they are show-offs. They cannot resist shaping themselves to spell the one word they know how to spell, before they attack. That one word is "SCRAM".
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.
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."
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).
They are mentioned in another of Dahl's books James and the Giant Peach, after cops see that the peach has landed on the Empire State Building.
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