mouser
See also: Mouser
English
Etymology
From Middle English mousere (“a hunter of mice”), equivalent to mouse + -er. The “moustache” sense is apparently an extended usage (i.e., a cat’s whiskers, jocularly transferred to human beings), possibly with influence from moustache.[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈmaʊzə(ɹ)/, /ˈmaʊsə(ɹ)/
Audio (Southern England) (file) - Rhymes: -aʊzə(ɹ), -aʊsə(ɹ)
Noun
mouser (plural mousers)
- A cat that catches mice, kept specifically for the purpose. [from 15th c.]
- (chiefly Scotland, US) A moustache.
- 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 20:
- He was a pretty man, well upstanding, with great shoulders on him and his hair was fair and fine and he had a broad brow and a gey bit coulter of a nose and he twisted his mouser ends up with wax like that creature the German Kaiser […].
Related terms
- Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office: the official resident cat at 10 Downing Street
Translations
cat that catches mice
References
- “mouser”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, →OCLC.
Middle English
Scots
Etymology
Apparently an extended usage of English mouser (“a cat”), hence a cat’s whiskers, jocularly transferred to human beings, possibly with influence from moustache.[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [mʌusər]
References
- “mouser”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, →OCLC.
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