mouselingn.
/ˈmaʊslɪŋ/, U.S. /ˈmaʊslɪŋ/ A small or young mouse. Occasionally: the young of another animal more or less resembling a mouse. Also figurative.
ΘΚΠ
the world > animals > mammals > group Unguiculata or clawed mammal > order Rodentia or rodent > superfamily Myomorpha (mouse, rat, vole, or hamster) > [noun] > family Muridae > genus Mus or mouse > small or young
pup1815
mouseling1832
mousekin1859
mouselet1867
1832 J. Bree St. Herbert's Isle 149 So in the silly mouseling went..Here, eat this silly mouseling up!
1860 P. H. Gosse Romance Nat. Hist. 148 The tiny harvest mouse,..which brings up its large little family of eight hopeful mouselings in a nest no bigger than a cricket-ball.
1892 ‘V. Fane’ Poems II. 154 Wrested from his kind While yet a mouseling,..He was the only Dormouse in the place.
1931 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 17 498 Had the intensely pigmented female herself been introduced into the cage as a mouseling, the chances are [etc.].
1980 Washington Post (Nexis) 19 Oct. 12 Noisy Nora is a middle child, or, I should say, a middle mouseling, since she is a member of a family of mice.
1998 San Diego Union-Tribune (Nexis) 22 Jan. (Night & Day section) 32 When much of the staff is put on part time, and told to do some of their work at home on computers, subversive protest comes only from the mouseling, from Dorine.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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