mouse
To move cautiously or furtively, in the manner of a mouse (the rodent) (frequently used in the phrasal verb to mouse around).
Noun
- Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.
- Near-synonyms: murine, murid, vole (all parasynonymous with this broad sense)
Hypernyms: muroid myomorph myodont rodent mammal vertebrate animal organism gnawer critter creature
Coordinate Terms: rat mole mole-rat
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(strictly) Such a rodent that is of the genus Mus.
- At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs. -...
- A person smeared with the excrement of a mouse was rendered impotent, according to Pliny the Elder. - 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 158:
- In molecular biologist David Sinclair’s lab at Harvard Medical School, old mice are growing young again. […] After injecting the virus into the eye, the pluripotent genes were then switched on by feeding the mouse an...
Hypernyms: muroid myomorph myodont rodent mammal vertebrate animal organism gnawer critter creature murine murid
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(figurative) A quiet or shy person.
- She's probably hiding in her room, she always does when we have company. She's our little mouse.
Hypernyms: muroid myomorph myodont rodent mammal vertebrate animal organism gnawer critter creature
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(figurative, obsolete) A familiar term of endearment.
- Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, / Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse - c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 4:
Hypernyms: muroid myomorph myodont rodent mammal vertebrate animal organism gnawer critter creature
- An input device that is moved over a pad or other flat surface to produce a corresponding movement of a pointer on a graphical display.
- My mouse needs new batteries.
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(computing, by extension) An on-screen pointer controlled by a mouse device.
- Move the mouse over the icon.
- A facial hematoma or black eye.
- A turn or lashing of spun yarn or small stuff, or a metallic clasp or fastening, uniting the point and shank of a hook to prevent its unhooking or straightening out.
- A match used in firing guns or blasting.
- A small model of (a fragment of) Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the context).
- A small cushion for a woman's hair.
- Part of a hind leg of beef, next to the round.
Synonyms: mouse buttock
Origin
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *múHs Proto-Germanic *mūs Proto-West Germanic *mūs Old English mūs Middle English mous English mouse Inherited from Middle English mous, from Old English mūs, from Proto-West Germanic *mūs, from Proto-Germanic *mūs, from Proto-Indo-European *múHs. Cognates Germanic cognates include Old Frisian mūs, Old Saxon mūs (German Low German Muus), Dutch muis, Old High German mūs (German Maus), Old Norse mús (Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish mus, Faroese and Icelandic mús). Indo-European cognates include Ancient Greek μῦς (mûs), Latin mūs, Spanish mur, Armenian մուկ (muk), Old Church Slavonic мꙑшь (myšĭ) (Russian мышь (myšʹ)), Albanian mi, Persian موش (muš), Northern Kurdish mişk, Sanskrit मूष् (mūṣ). The computing sense was coined by American engineer Bill English in 1965 and first used publicly in a publication titled "Computer-Aided...
Forms
Hypernyms
Hyponyms
birch mouse bristly mouse cactus mouse California mouse church mouse Cypriot mouse deer mouse dormouse fancy mouse fat mouse field mouse harvest mouse hopping mouse house mouse Java mouse-deer kangaroo mouse Malagasy mouse meadow jumping mouse mesquite mouse mouse-goat mouse-like hamster mouse stock New World mouse Old World mouse
Related
Derived
a cat in gloves catches no mice anonymouse antimouse Arctic mouse-ear are you a man or a mouse quiet as a mouse Baker's small-toothed harvest mouse bastard big-footed mouse big-footed mouse bit by a barn mouse brush-furred mouse brush-tailed mouse cat and mouse cat-and-mouse churchmouse city mouse clit mouse cotton mouse Count Branicki's mouse country mouse creepmouse Darling Downs hopping mouse demouse desert mouse
Verb
- To move cautiously or furtively, in the manner of a mouse (the rodent) (frequently used in the phrasal verb to mouse around).
- To hunt or catch mice (the rodents), usually of cats. [from 12th c.]
- To close the mouth of a hook by a careful binding of marline or wire.
- Captain Higgins moused the hook with a bit of marline to prevent the block beckets from falling out under slack.
- To navigate by means of a computer mouse.
- I had just moused to the File menu and the pull-down menu repeated the menu bar's hue a dozen shades lighter. - 1988, MacUser, volume 4:
- Unlike the Flamenco work, the Relation Browser allows users to quickly explore a document space using dynamic queries issued by mousing over facet elements in the interface. - 2009, Daniel Tunkelang, Faceted Search,...
- To tear, as a cat devours a mouse.
- [Death] mousing the flesh of men. - c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...