mice
/maɪs/
mice is the plural of mouse.
Meaning of mouse
Noun
mouse (plural mice or (computing) mouses)
- 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.1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC
- 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 mousec. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 4
- 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.
Verb
mice (third-person singular simple present mices, present participle micing, simple past and past participle miced)
- To be distracted or inattentive (possibly alluding to a cat being distracted by a mouse).
- That cat's mysin, he doesn't see the dog coming.1984, Peter A. Smith, Fred M. Barritt, Bermewjan Vurds, Island Press
- A breakfast diner might describe an incident with someone who was "not too tightly wrapped". Or not wanting to waste time on someone who was always "micin". Another breakfast guest might explode with "what'chu mean?", only to be told half-jokingly, “Bie ... shut yor mouth”.2015 December 9, Jack Gauntlett, “Bermudian sayings always raise a smile”, in The Royal Gazette, archived from the original on 11 Dec 2022
Forms of mice
| third-person singular present | mices |
|---|---|
| present participle | micing |
| past participle | miced |
| past | miced |
Origin of mice
From Middle English mys, mice, muis, mise, mis, from Old English mȳs (“mice”), from an umlauted form of Proto-Germanic *mūsiz (“mice”), nominative and vocative plural of Proto-Germanic *mūs (“mouse”). Compare Scots mice, mise, myse, myce (“mice”), West Frisian mûzen (“mice”), Dutch muizen (“mice”), German Mäuse (“mice”), Swedish möss (“mice”), Faroese mýs (“mice”), Icelandic mýs (“mice”). More at mouse.
Words formed from mice
Phrases with mice
- fat mice
- lab mice
- sea mice
- city mice
- clit mice
- deer mice
- dust mice
- rock mice
- sand mice
- wood mice
- birch mice
- fancy mice
68 more phrasesFewer phrases
- field mice
- house mice
- joint mice
- sable mice
- sugar mice
- water mice
- zebra mice
- cactus mice
- church mice
- cotton mice
- desert mice
- Doogie mice
- flying mice
- meadow mice
- nipple mice
- pocket mice
- Rudd's mice
- vesper mice
- woolly mice
- bristly mice
- country mice
- Cypriot mice
- glacier mice
- harvest mice
- hopping mice
- jumping mice
- optical mice
- pouched mice
- kangaroo mice
- knockout mice
- mesquite mice
- oldfield mice
- scorpion mice
- vertical mice
- marsupial mice
- New World mice
- Old World mice
- ricefield mice
- big-footed mice
- laboratory mice
- grasshopper mice
- brush-furred mice
- brush-tailed mice
- spiny pocket mice
- Taiwan field mice
- white-footed mice
- Formosan wood mice
- sheath-tailed mice
- striped field mice
- yellow-necked mice
- meadow jumping mice
- northern birch mice
- St Kilda field mice
- Count Branicki's mice
- long-tailed field mice
- bastard big-footed mice
- greater big-footed mice
- Mitchell's hopping mice
- Petter's big-footed mice
- yellow-necked field mice
- northern grasshopper mice
- southern grasshopper mice
- a cat in gloves catches no mice
- when the cat's away the mice play
- Baker's small-toothed harvest mice
- when the cat's away the mice will play
- the best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray
- the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry
Words that rhyme with mice
Questions about mice
- What does mice mean?
- Mice means to be distracted or inattentive (possibly alluding to a cat being distracted by a mouse).
- What is mice the plural of?
- Mice is the plural of mouse.
- What part of speech is mice?
- Mice is a verb.
- How do you pronounce mice?
- Mice is pronounced /maɪs/.
- What is the past tense of mice?
- The past tense of mice is miced.
Words near mice in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mice (page history and authors); mouse (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-mice.wav.
Cite this entry: “mice.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mice. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.