Mouse
AI In plain words
Writing a short explanation…
Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.
mouse¹
- /maʊs/ US, UK
- /mʌʊs/ Canada
- /maʊz/ US, UK
- /maʊz/ Canada
Rhymes with -aʊs, -aʊz
Where it comes from
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 Display Control", in reference to the similarity with the animal.
noun mice · mouses · mowse
- 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)
- 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 quiet or shy person. She's probably hiding in her room, she always does when we have company. She's our little mouse.
- A familiar term of endearment. Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, / Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse
- 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.
- 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.
verb mouses · mousing · moused · mowse
- 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.
- 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.
- To tear, as a cat devours a mouse. [Death] mousing the flesh of men.
Mouse²
Where it comes from
The surname is sometimes an Americanized spelling of German Maus. The metonym for Disney comes from its icon Mickey Mouse.
proper noun Mouses
- The Walt Disney Company. At Disney, on the other hand, there was only one landowner and one government; public and private were fused. […] Spawned by the Mouse's arrival, I-Drive (as it is known locally) runs parallel to I-4, lying partly in Orlando and partly[…]
- A surname from German.
