Dictionaries › English

mouse

Pronunciation: /maʊs/

The English word “mouse” has 17 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.
  2. Such a rodent that is of the genus Mus.
  3. A quiet or shy person.
  4. A familiar term of endearment.
  5. 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.
  6. An on-screen pointer controlled by a mouse device.
  7. A facial hematoma or black eye.
  8. 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.
  9. A match used in firing guns or blasting.
  10. A small model of (a fragment of) Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the context).
  11. A small cushion for a woman's hair.
  12. Part of a hind leg of beef, next to the round.

verb

  1. To move cautiously or furtively, in the manner of a mouse (the rodent) (frequently used in the phrasal verb to mouse around).
  2. To hunt or catch mice (the rodents), usually of cats.
  3. To close the mouth of a hook by a careful binding of marline or wire.
  4. To navigate by means of a computer mouse.
  5. To tear, as a cat devours a mouse.

Etymology

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).…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “mouse” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.