flittermouse
flittermouse noun: a bat (a flying mammal).
Noun
flittermouse (plural flittermice)
- A bat (a flying mammal).
- I thank thee, gentle flittermouse, for these so pleasant memories. Have you ever caught and examined a flittermouse?1891, Conway Lloyd Morgan, Animal sketches
- The bats wheel overhead, their soft wings crumpling as they turn their somersaults, but never a voice in the air, save sharp needle-points of sound, as flittermouse calls to flittermouse.1894, Philip Stewart Robinson, Birds of the Wave and Woodland, Electronic Edition, unnumbered page
Forms of flittermouse
| plural | flittermice |
|---|---|
| alternative form | flear-mouse |
| alternative form | flettermouse |
| alternative form | flitter-mouse |
| alternative form | fluttermouse |
| alternative form | flickermouse |
Origin of flittermouse
From flitter + mouse (compare flickermouse, flindermouse), after Middle Dutch fleddermuys, vledermuys, vlermuys (Modern Dutch vleermuis), from vledderen, vlederen (“to flutter, float, hover”) + muys (“mouse”). Cognate with West Frisian flearmûs (“bat”), Middle Low German vledermūs (“bat”), German Fledermaus (“bat”), Swedish fladdermus (“bat”) and flädermus (“bat”). More at flitter, flutter, flatter, mouse.
Questions about flittermouse
- What does flittermouse mean?
- Flittermouse means a bat (a flying mammal).
- What part of speech is flittermouse?
- Flittermouse is a noun.
- What is the plural of flittermouse?
- The plural of flittermouse is flittermice.
Words near flittermouse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: flittermouse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-flittermouse.wav.
Cite this entry: “flittermouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flittermouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.