Influenced or manipulated by private persuasion or gossip, or caught/affected by earwigs.
From 'earwig' meaning to whisper persuasions in someone's ear. The 'earwig' creature itself got its name from an old folk belief (false) that it crawls into sleeping people's ears. British slang 'earwig' as a verb means to eavesdrop or persuade secretly.
Medieval people genuinely believed earwigs crawled into your brain through your ears—so 'earwigging' someone meant whispering persuasive things into their ear, like the bug supposedly did! The word stuck even though the danger was completely imaginary.
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