Word.ws English Dictionary

mousing

mousing is the present participle and gerund of mouse.

Noun

mousing (countable and uncountable, plural mousings)

  1. The act of hunting mice (or similar prey), especially by pouncing on them from above.
  2. 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.
  3. A ratchet movement in a loom.
  4. Use of the mouse

Meaning of mouse

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
  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]...

See all 19 meanings of mouse

Adjective

mousing (comparative more mousing, superlative most mousing)

  1. Impertinently inquisitive; prying; meddlesome.
    • mousing saints1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC

Forms of mousing

Noun
pluralmousings
Adjective
comparativemore mousing
superlativemost mousing

Words formed from mousing

Phrases with mousing

Questions about mousing

What does mousing mean?
Mousing means the act of hunting mice (or similar prey), especially by pouncing on them from above.
What is mousing the present participle and gerund of?
Mousing is the present participle and gerund of mouse.
What part of speech is mousing?
Mousing can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of mousing?
The plural of mousing is mousings.

Words near mousing in the dictionary

  1. mousier
  2. mousies
  3. mousiest
  4. mousily
  5. mousiness
  6. mousing
  7. mousing around
  8. mousing hook
  9. mousing hooks
  10. mousing over
  11. mousingly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mousing (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:

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