mouser

See also: Mouser

English

Etymology

From Middle English mousere (“a hunter of mice”), equivalent to mouse +‎ -er (agent noun suffix) or +‎ -er (occupational suffix). The “moustache” sense is apparently an extended usage (i.e., a cat’s whiskers, jocularly transferred to human beings), possibly with influence from moustache.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmaʊzə(ɹ)/, /ˈmaʊsə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊzə(ɹ), -aʊsə(ɹ)

Noun

mouser (plural mousers)

1. A cat that catches mice, kept specifically for the purpose. [from 15th c.]
2. (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

• Albanian: micë (sq) f
• Catalan: rater, ratador
• French: souricier (fr) m
• Galician: murador (gl) m
• Hungarian: egerész (hu)
• Pennsylvania German: Mauskatz
• Russian: мышелов (ru) (myšelov)
• Serbo-Croatian: mišolovac (sh) m
• Swedish: råttfångarkatt c
• Volapük: (♂♀) mugamakat, (♂) mugamahikat, (♀) mugamajikat

Anagrams

• -merous, moeurs, oremus

Middle English

Noun

mouser

1. Alternative form of mousere

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.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [mʌusər]

Noun

mouser (plural mousers)

1. moustache

   Synonym: moutash