Etymology

mouse

M3O1U1S1E1

Today it means: Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail. Full definition →

Middle English mous ← Old English mūs ← Proto-West Germanic *mūs
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mouse · noun, verb1

  1. Proto-Indo-European*múHs
  2. Proto-Germanic*mūs
  3. Proto-West Germanic*mūs
  4. Old Englishmūs
  5. Middle Englishmous
  6. English todaymouse

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.

Mouse · proper noun2

  1. German · derived fromMaus
  2. English todayMouse

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

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.