A mouse is a small animal with a pointed nose, round ears, and a long tail, often found in fields or houses. The word also refers to the hand-held device used to control a computer cursor on the screen.
From Old English *mūs*, related to German *Maus* and Latin *mus*, from a very old Indo-European root. The computer sense was coined in the 1960s because the device was small and had a “tail” like the animal.
The computer mouse wasn’t named by a branding team—it was a casual nickname that stuck because engineers thought it looked like a mouse. For years, people predicted we’d stop using them, but they’ve survived touchscreens, trackpads, and voice commands. The same tiny word now lives in both biology and computing classrooms.
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