mouse
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mouse", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "mouse" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "mouse" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mouse is aEnglishnoun. It means: A rodent, typically having a small body, dark fur, and a long tail. Pronounced /maʊs/. It ranks #4,255 in English word frequency. Often confused with must and move.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mouse |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /maʊs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #4,255 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mouse is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /maʊs/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,255 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for mouse, with forms such as "mmouse", "mosue", and "moues". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "must", "move", "mute", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is mouse, spelled M-O-U-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A rodent, typically having a small body, dark fur, and a long tail.
- 2Any small rodent of the genus Mus.
- 3A quiet or shy person.
- 4An input device that is moved over a pad or other flat surface to produce a corresponding movement of a pointer on a graphical display.
- 5A pointer.
- 6A facial hematoma or black eye.
- 7A 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.
- 8A familiar term of endearment.
- 9A match used in firing guns or blasting.
- 10A small model of (a fragment of) Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with desirable properties (depending on the context).
- 11A small cushion for a woman's hair.
- 12Part of a hind leg of beef, next to the round.
Etymology
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 (Swedish mus, Danish mus, Norwegian mus, Icelandic mús, Faroese 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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmouse,mosue,moues,muose,omuse
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for mouse
Misspelling Variants of "mouse"
Frequency rank: #4,255 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: