Mouse (pronounced
mous (verb form sometimes mouz))
(1) Any of numerous small Old World rodents of
the family Muridae, especially of the genus Mus, introduced widely in other
parts of the world.
(2) Any similar small animal of various rodent
and marsupial families.
(3) As a verb (used with object), moused or
mousing (1) to hunt out, as a cat hunts out mice, (2) to move a cursor about a
screen using a mouse or (3) to prowl about, as if in search of something.
(4) In nautical use, to secure with a mousing (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) As mouse-like, when applied to people, a
descriptor of timidity.
(6) One of a brace of rodent-based slang terms to
differentiate between the small-block (mouse motor) and big-block (rat motor)
Chevrolet V8s built mostly in the mid-late twentieth century.
(7) In computing, a hand-held device used to
control the cursor movement and select computing functions without using the
keyboard.
(8) As a descriptor of hair color, a dull and
lifeless blonde.
(9) In boxing, slang for black eye (hematoma).
(10) In early artillery, a match used in firing
guns or in blasting.
(11) In the mathematics of set theory, a fragment
of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the
context).
(12) A small cushion for a woman's hair
(obsolete).
(13) As mouse hair, an expression used to
describe the suede-like covering used by some low-volume Italian car
manufacturers for some interior fittings.
Pre 900: From the Middle English mous (plural mis) and Old English mūs (small
rodent (also “muscle of the arm”)) (plural mȳs), from the Proto-Germanic mus, probably ultimately
derived from the primitive Indo-European mus
& muhs. Germanic cognates include the Old Frisian mūs, the Old Saxon mūs, the Low German Muus,
the Dutch muis, the Old High German mūs (German Maus), the Old Norse mús,
the Swedish mus, the Danish mus, the Norwegian mus, the Icelandic mús
& the Faroese mús. Indo-European cognates include the Ancient
Greek μῦς (mûs), the Latin mūs, the Spanish mur, the
Armenian մուկ (muk), the Old Church
Slavonic myšĭ, the Russian
мышь (myšʹ), the Albanian mi,
the Persian موش (muš) & the Sanskrit मूष् (mūṣ). Mouse & mousing are nouns & verbs, moused is a verb, mousy is an adjective and mousily is an adverb; the noun plural is mice (mouses a curious and best-avoided invention used to refer to the computer hardware).
Lindsay Lohan at Disneyland Resort, Anaheim, California with Mickey Mouse in 2003 (left) and, 21 years on, in 2024 (right). Lindsay still looks good but Mickey hasn't aged a day.
The use to
describe something (or more commonly someone) as timid or weak dates from the late
fourteenth century and the phrase of diametric contrast “an or mouse” emerged
in the 1620s. The meaning "black
eye" (or other dis-colored lump on the body) is from 1842 and is part of
the jargon of boxing. The familiar use
in computing to describe a "small device moved by the hand over a flat
surface to maneuver a cursor or arrow on a display screen" is from 1965,
though the word had been applied to many objects with some vague remembrance to
the rodent was applied to many objects since 1750 and was especially popular in
Admiralty use. The computer mouse picked
up the name because the cord which connected it to the computer (which in the
early days of PCs was usually a serial or bus connection) was compared to the
creature’s tail; although the things increasingly are wireless and thus have no “tail”
the name has stuck, divorced from the original imagery. The preferred plural is mice (pronounced mahys); in the Old English it was mys and mice is thus an example if i-mutation. The curious adoption of mouses as the plural
for the computer mouse had no etymological or other basis and seems to have
come into use to ensure references to the plastic pointing device wouldn’t be
confused with rodents though it’s difficult to imagine that would often happen. In the espionage community, MICE is a term used to refer to the four factors most likely to induce people to "work for the other side" by becoming traitor to their own country: Money, Ideology, Corruption & Ego. In the hospitality industry, MICE is Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions which collectively describes a market segment distinct from activities such as weddings or birthday celebrations which can be held in the same physical space.
Lindsay Lohan in Minnie Mouse mode, smoking.
The verb mouse
(to hunt or catch mice) developed from the noun in the mid-thirteenth century
and was from the earlier mousen while
the noun mouse-hole (very small hole where mice go in and out, a hole only big
enough to admit a mouse) dates from the early fifteenth century; from later
that century, the noun mouser (cat that hunts mice) was an agent noun from the
verb. The adjective mousy (resembling a
mouse) dates from 1812 was actually used mostly as a synonym of “mouse-like” to
describe the demeanour of the timid although there are instances of use in
zoology as an anatomical descriptor; after 1512 it came to describe hair color,
now more memorably referred to as dirty blonde”. The noun mousetrap (trap for catching mice)
emerged in the mid-fifteenth century with figurative use noted since the 1570s.
The device however is an ancient design
(which, conceptually, probably can’t be improved upon) and in the Old English
was musfealle (literally "mouse-fall"
after the imagery of the trap falling on the mouse); in the late fourteenth
century Middle English it was mouscacche (literally
"mouse-catch").
The figurative use of Mickey Mouse, the cartoon character
created in 1928 by US animator Walt Disney (1901-1966) is interesting. As an adjective meaning "small and
worthless, petty, inconsequential" it was in use by 1951, presumably a
reference to the less than exact accuracy in time-keeping by the popular, cheaply
made Mickey Mouse wristwatch. A similar negative
connotation had emerged in 1935 to describe the innocuous but unimaginative dance-band
music played as background in cartoon films.
However, by the 1950s, the Californian hot-rod movement had adopted Mickey
Mouse as a contronym to describe the best and most desirable after-market equipment.
Small and big-block Chevrolet V8s compared, the small-block (mouse) to the left in each image, the big-block (rat) to the right.
Mouse and rat are informal terms used
respectively to refer to the classic small (1955-2003 although still produced
as a crate-engine) and big-block Chevrolet V8s (1958-2021 although still produced
as a crate-engine). The small-block was
first named although the origin is contested; either it was (1) an allusion to “mighty
mouse” a popular cartoon character of the 1950s, the idea being the relatively
small engine being competitive with many bigger units from other manufacturers (which is some cases was true) or (2) an allusion to the big, heavy Chrysler Hemi V8s (the first generation 331 354 & 392 cubic inch (5.4. 5.8 & 6.4 litre) versions) being known as “the elephant”, the idea
based on the widely held belief that elephants are scared of mice (which may
actually be true although the reason appears not to be the long repeated myth
it’s because the little rodents might climb up their trunk and it transpires they probably are more averse to bees). The mouse (small-block) and rat (big-block)
distinction is simple to understand: the big block is externally larger although confusingly the internal displacement of some mouse motors was greater than that of some rats.
The plural in Modern English
The tendency by the mid-1980s to differentiate
between multiple rodents and multiple Computer-Aided
Display Control Devices (as mice were first called) as mice and mouses
respectively was curious. While the
onset of mass-market computing in the 1980s made some linguistic
differentiation desirable (eg between program
for software and programme for all
other contexts), there has never been much chance, in any context, of confusing
rodents with two or more computer mice.
Hopefully, mouses will go
extinct.
One mouse, two mice.
That does beg the question of why multiple
rodents are mice and not mouses given that would be the usual
practice in English: add an “s”. Among
animals, the mouse is not unique in this variation; there’s also moose, ox and goose, none of
which enjoy plurals created by adding an “s” and there’s no apparent
consistency for were the model for oxen to be universal, Modern English would
enjoy goosen, micen and moosen, an echo
of Old English. In Modern English, mostly
the noun plural is made by adding an “s” but there are irregular plurals, many but
not all of which are animal names.
The first group of irregular nouns come from an
obsolete strain of Old English and
includes ox and oxen. Old English was a West
Germanic language spoken and written between the mid-fifth and late-eleventh centuries
in parts of what are now England and southern Scotland; it’s in this the epic
poem Beowulf was written. Although unintelligible to speakers of Modern
English, as it evolved, it retained some elements of Old English including the
plural nouns oxen, children and brethren although the evolution was organic and not consistent; some
other nouns, such as eye, house and hose used to be pluralized in a similar
way, but those forms, eyen, housen and hosen are now dialectic or obsolete. Hosen
of course endures in Modern German, as in lederhosen
but, there are at least five different ways German nouns can form the plural.
The second group of irregular plurals are mutants, also from Old English roots. Examples include foot, goose, woman and louse
which as plurals became feet, geese, women, and lice, all under the influence of German. Mutated plurals are formed simply by changing
the vowel sound of the singular, in a process called “umlaut”. An “umlaut” is better known as the two-dot
symbol seen above some German vowels, but there’s also a sense in which it’s a
concept in technical linguistics. While
quite rare in Modern English, mutated plurals are in common use and include man & men, mouse & mice and tooth & teeth.
Finally, there are nouns where the singular and
plural forms are the same, such as deer,
fish, moose, sheep, shrimp and swine;
these are called zero-plural nouns. Many are animals, but there are others such
as aircraft and species. Even here, there
are deviations such as the convention in science to use fishes to differentiate between one and multiple species of fish
which makes sense in a way mouses never did.
The fish vs fishes thing does have history. There are many references to fish in the
Bible, never species, just fish singular or plural but translators rendered the
plural as both “fish” and “fishes” even when not necessarily referring to
actual fish. Translators used “fish” in
its plural sense when the Greek opsarion
appeared, a word simply denoting food eaten with bread, which was often fish
but it’s translated also as "fishes", the original spellings often "fysshe"
and "fysshes". Both the
original 1611 and the 1789 revision of the King James Version are rendered
thus:
John
21:8 And the other disciples
came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two
hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes.
John
21:9 As soon then as they were
come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.
John
21:10 Jesus saith unto them,
Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.
John
21:11 Simon Peter went up, and
drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and
for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.
None of this offers any revelation of grammatical
or theological truth but it does illustrate the murky history of English
plurals. So, in English, there is no consistent rule for
noun plural formations. Unfortunately,
the language is what it is and all that can be done is to memorize weird
plurals, just as one has to learn irregular verbs.
Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus
The “mountain in labor” is imagery dating from
Antiquity (thought to be a Greek proverb) and has since often been used in
Western literature. The idea is of
speech in a literary or
political context which promises much but delivers little (ie “over promising
and under-delivering” or “much ado about little”). It’s best remembered in the phrase used by
the the Roman lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC) in the influential Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry (19 BC)): Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus (The
mountains are in labor but only an absurd mouse will be born).
And don’t start like
the old writer of epic cycles:
‘Of Priam’s fate I’ll
sing, and the greatest of Wars.’
What could he produce
to match his opening promise?
Mountains will labour:
what’s born? A ridiculous mouse!
