Dormouse
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.
"For a long time the dormouse and polecat had seemed to him overfeeble enemies for his restless valour, even as the granary floor seemed to afford too narrow a field. Every day he read the papers of the previous day in the servants' hall of the houses he visited, and it appeared to him that this war in America, which was hailed as the awakening of the spirit of liberty and justice in the New World, ought to produce a revolution in France."
- 2 small furry-tailed squirrel-like Old World rodent that becomes torpid in cold weather wordnet
- 3 Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.; Glis glis (edible dormouse).
- 4 Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.; Muscardinus avellanarius (hazel dormouse). UK
- 5 A person who sleeps a great deal, or who falls asleep readily (by analogy with the sound hibernation of the dormouse). figuratively
Example
More examples"The squirrel, the ape and the monkey, are kept at home for amusement. The dormouse and other larger mice, such as the weevil, the martin, the ferret, trouble the home."
Etymology
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.
Related phrases
More for "dormouse"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.