Vermicious knids are monsters in one of Roald Dahl’s childrens books. Willie Wonka (owner of the chocolate factory) says that the K is sounded - which is of course not normal in English. These are monsters in outer space who are normally egg shaped, though they can morph into other forms. I have recently found in Fiona McPherson’s Indo-European Cognate Dictionary the entry “*knid-”. The PIE root means louse, nit, louse egg. (Modern english “nit” from this root). Dahl (this from Wikipedia) doesn’t give an etymology for “knid”. Could it come from the above-mentioned PIE root? It would be a strange, maybe unique etymological path if a PIE root had been directly fed into modern English. I hope it’s so! And it would explain why the K is sounded.