dormouse
/ˈdɔɹ.maʊs/noun
dormouse is spelled D-O-R-M-O-U-S-E. The wrong spelling people search most is doormouse: about 90 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Dormouse is a noun meaning “Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae”. The plural of dormouse is dormice.
How many letters and syllables are in dormouse?
| Letters | 8: D-O-R-M-O-U-S-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 10 million words; the 97,057th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, doormouse, about 90 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell dormouse?
Dormouse is spelled D-O-R-M-O-U-S-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for dormouse in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is dormouse?
Dormouse appears about once in every 10 million words in written English, the 97,057th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce dormouse?
- US /ˈdɔɹ.maʊs/
- UK /ˈdɔː.maʊs/
Dormouse has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-dormouse.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-dormouse.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of dormouse
- dormice plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does dormouse mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.
- 2
Glis glis (edible dormouse).
- 3
UKMuscardinus avellanarius (hazel dormouse).
- 4
A person who sleeps a great deal, or who falls asleep readily (by analogy with the sound hibernation of the dormouse).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Dormouse in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | loir |
| German | Bilch, Bilchmaus, Schläfer, Schlafmaus, Siebenschläfer, Gartenschläfer |
| Portuguese | arganaz , dorminhoco |
| Spanish | lirón |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does dormouse come from?
From Middle English dormowse, of uncertain origin. Possibly from a dialectal *dor-, from Old Norse dár (“benumbed”) + mous (“mouse”). More at doze, mouse. The word is sometimes conjectured to come from an Anglo-Norman derivative of Old French dormir (“to sleep”) (as *dormouse (“tending to be dormant”), with second element mistaken for mouse), but no such Anglo-Norman term is known to have existed.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).