Word.ws English Dictionary

mouse

/maʊs/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Canada/mʌʊs/

mouse noun: any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.

mouse: any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail
Image: George Shuklin, CC BY-SA 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

mouse (plural mice or (computing) mouses)

  1. (broadly) 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)
    Synonyms:
    murine, murid, vole
    1. (broadly, 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.1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC
      • 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
    2. (broadly, figuratively) A quiet or shy person.
      • She's probably hiding in her room, she always does when we have company. She's our little mouse.
    3. (broadly, figuratively, obsolete) 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
  2. 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.
    1. (broadly) An on-screen pointer controlled by a mouse device.
      • Move the mouse over the icon.
  3. A facial hematoma or black eye.
  4. 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.
  5. A match used in firing guns or blasting.
  6. A small model of (a fragment of) Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the context).
  7. (historical) A small cushion for a woman's hair.
  8. Part of a hind leg of beef, next to the round.
    Synonyms:
    mouse buttock

Verb

mouse (third-person singular simple present mouses, present participle mousing, simple past and past participle moused)

  1. (intransitive) To move cautiously or furtively, in the manner of a mouse (the rodent) (frequently used in the phrasal verb to mouse around).
  2. (intransitive) To hunt or catch mice (the rodents), usually of cats.
  3. (transitive) 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.
  4. (intransitive) 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, page 35
  5. (nonce-word, obsolete, transitive) 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 Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Proper noun capitalized: Mouse

Mouse (plural Mouses)

  1. (US, metonymically, uncountable, with-definite-article) 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[…]2001 January 1, Richard E. Foglesong, Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 93
    • They are cut off from their regular jobs to see how the Mouse operates. Eisner told the Harvard Business Review.
      Synergy happens at Disney because it should. Our products scream out for synergy.2005, Ralph E. Hanson, Mass Communication: Living in a Media World
  2. A surname from German.

mouse meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

mouse in Hindi

computing: input device
माउस māus
rodent of the genus Mus
चूहा cūhā

mouse in Tamil

computing: input device
சுட்டி cuṭṭi
rodent of the genus Mus
சுண்டெலி cuṇṭeli
to catch mice
எலி பிடி eli piṭi

mouse in Marathi

computing: input device
माउस māus
rodent of the genus Mus
उंन्दिर unndir

mouse in Urdu

computing: input device
ماؤُس māus
rodent of the genus Mus
چُوہا cūhā
More languagesFewer languages
mouse in Bengali
মাউস maus, ইঁদুর ĩdur
mouse in Telugu
ఎలుక eluka
mouse in Malayalam
മൗസ് mausŭ, ചുണ്ടെലി cuṇṭeli
mouse in Kannada
ಇಲಿ ili
mouse in Punjabi
ਚੂਹਾ cūhā, چُوہا cūhā
mouse in Gujarati
ઉંદર undar
mouse in Odia
ମୂଷା muṣā
mouse in Sanskrit
मूष् mūṣ, आखु ākhu
mouse in Sinhala
මීයා mīyā
mouse in Assamese
নিগনি nigoni
mouse in Nepali
मुसो muso
mouse in Pashto
موږک muģak
mouse in Tagalog
daga
mouse in Arabic
فَأْرَة faʔra, مَاوْس māws, فَأْر faʔr, فار fār
mouse in Malay
tetikus, tikus, mencit
mouse in Indonesian
mouse komputer, tetikus, tikus
mouse in Persian
موشْوارِه mušvâre, مُوْس mows, موش muš, موشی muši
mouse in Thai
เมาส์ máo, เม้าส์ máo, หนู nǔu
mouse in Vietnamese
chuột, chuột máy tính
mouse in Myanmar
ကြွက် krwak, မောက်စ် maukc
Sindhi
ڪوُئو kūʾō
Dhivehi
މީދާ mīdā

Examples of mouse in a sentence

  • After the cat killed a mouse, she left it on our doorstep.
  • I put down some traps in my apartment to try and deal with the mouse problem.
  • Use your mouse to select the colour you want to use from the circular colour palette.

All 40 example sentences with mouse

Synonyms of mouse

Forms of mouse

Noun
pluralmice
pluralmouses
alternative form (obsolete)mowse
Verb
third-person singular presentmouses
present participlemousing
past participlemoused
pastmoused
Proper noun
pluralMouses

Plural of mouse: mice or mouses

Origin of 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.

The surname is sometimes an Americanized spelling of German Maus. The metonym for Disney comes from its icon Mickey Mouse.

Words formed from mouse

Phrases with mouse

122 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with mouse

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mouse

What does mouse mean?
Mouse means any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.
What is mouse in Hindi?
Mouse in Hindi is माउस (māus), चूहा (cūhā). See Mouse meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is mouse?
Mouse can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mouse?
Mouse is pronounced /maʊs/ (UK).
What is the plural of mouse?
The plural of mouse is mice.

Words near mouse in the dictionary

  1. mousaka
  2. mousakas
  3. mousambi
  4. mousambis
  5. Mousas
  6. mouse
  7. mouse around
  8. mouse belt
  9. mouse belts
  10. mouse bungee
  11. mouse bungees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mouse (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: En-uk-a mouse.ogg, en-us-mouse.ogg.

Cite this entry: “mouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.