mouse

noun

1. (broadly)Any of 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)”

2. (broadly)Any of many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.

   “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.”

   “A person smeared with the excrement of a mouse was rendered impotent, according to Pliny the Elder.”

   “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.”

3. A quiet or shy person.
4. 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.”

5. A pointer.

   “Move the mouse over the icon.”

6. A facial hematoma or black eye.
7. 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.
8. (obsolete)A familiar term of endearment.

   “Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, / Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse”

9. A match used in firing guns or blasting.
10. A small model of (a fragment of) Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the context).
11. (historical)A small cushion for a woman's hair.
12. Part of a hind leg of beef, next to the round.

verb

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.”

   “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.”

5. (nonce-word, obsolete, transitive)To tear, as a cat devours a mouse.

   “[Death] mousing the flesh of men.”

name

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[…]”

   “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.”

   “[…] take eventually eked up to $33 million worldwide, but not before Walt Disney Studios declared the whole experiment a disappointment. […] But when the Mouse cut bait, MAGI was forced to close its LA office and sell off Synthavision.”

   “This has led to the public believing that every animated film is made by the Mouse or, at least, is family-friendly entertainment. (A similar situation: Many people refer to all 3D animated films as “Pixar” films.) The cause dates back to Walt Disney's early days as an animator.”

2. A surname from German.