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dormouse

dor·mouse

UK/ˈdɔː.maʊs/ US/ˈdɔɹ.maʊs/ uncommon uk

noun

1.

small furry-tailed squirrel-like Old World rodent that becomes torpid in cold weather

Origin

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.

Phrases

  • fat dormouse
  • garden dormouse
  • Japanese dormouse
  • Oriental dormouse

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Parts

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.