The cat chased a small ____ across the kitchen floor late at night.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The cat sat perfectly still by the small hole in the kitchen wall, waiting patiently for the little ____ to come out and find some food.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *múHs
Proto-Germanic *mūs
Proto-West Germanic *mūs
Old English mūs
Middle English mous
English 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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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:
"In molecular biologist David Sinclair’s lab at Harvard Medical School, old mice are growing young again. […] After injecting the virus into the eye, the pluripotent genes were then switched on by feeding the mouse an antibiotic."
— 2022 June 2, Sandee LaMotte, “The ‘Benjamin Button’ effect: Scientists can reverse aging in mice. The goal is to do the same for humans”, in CNN:
"Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, / Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse"
— c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene 4:
"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: