mousing

Pluralmousings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of mouse.

   The old tabby kept mousing among the hay bales until dawn.

   She caught the terrier mousing in the long grass behind the shed.

   Note

   One spelling serves every verb sense of mouse: a cat mousing in the barn, someone mousing around where they should not be, a rigger mousing a hook with marline, a user mousing across a screen. As a gerund it shades into the hunting noun, so good at mousing names the activity. As a participle it keeps the action ongoing: the terrier was mousing.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The catching of mice or similar prey, typically by springing down onto them from above.

   Barn cats are valued for their mousing, which keeps grain stores clear of vermin.

   The terrier showed a real talent for mousing along the hedgerows.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The use of a computer mouse as an input device for pointing, clicking, and navigating on screen.

   Repetitive mousing over long workdays is a common cause of wrist strain.

   The interface was redesigned to reduce mousing by adding keyboard shortcuts.

   Note

   Interface designers treat it as a cost to be cut, which is why keyboard shortcuts are pitched as a way to reduce mousing. The word comes from the device rather than the animal, through the verb to mouse, meaning to navigate with one. It works naturally as a mass noun, as in too much mousing or less mousing. Long stretches of it are blamed for wrist strain.

4. 4
   adjective

   Rudely curious about others' affairs; given to prying and meddling where one has no business.

   The mousing clerk kept reading other people's letters before passing them along.

   Her mousing aunt could not resist poking into every family secret.

   Similarnosy, meddlesome, inquisitive

   Oppositediscreet, incurious

   Note

   Prying pictured as a mouse nosing furtively into corners. Roger L'Estrange writes of mousing saints in 1692, and the barb lies in the pairing: piety that cannot keep out of other people's business. As an adjective it compares with more and most, as in the most mousing of neighbors. It usually sits before the noun it criticizes.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A turn of spun yarn or small line, or a metal clasp, that binds the point and shank of a hook together to stop it from unhooking or straightening out.

   Before lifting the cargo, the bosun checked that every hook had a secure mousing.

   A loose mousing let the line work free of the hook during the swell.

   Note

   A seaman's safeguard for hooks. Small stuff is the sailor's name for light cordage, and a few turns of it, or a metal clasp, close the gap between point and shank so the load cannot work free. Used countably, it is the fitting on one hook: every hook had a mousing. Used uncountably, it is the binding in general. The matching verb is to mouse a hook.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A ratchet movement in a loom, allowing a part to advance in regular one-way increments without slipping back.

   The weaver oiled the mousing so it would advance smoothly with each pick.

   A worn mousing let the loom slip back between rows.

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