What is the language of origin of the word mouse?

Answer 1

The English word, 'mouse', has its origins in Old English 'mus' (small rodent) and came into English from Common Germanic (Proto-Germanic). No definite reference to first usage in English is recorded.

Before arriving in English, the word can be only be traced back as far as Greek, Latin, Old Slavonic and Sanskrit, all using 'mus' with various inflections, and sharing a base variant of 'steal', or 'rob', which is a very understandable human view of the behaviour of mice and other small rodents. Along the way the word gathered a meaning of 'muscle', perhaps from the shape of the rodent. Ultimately, the term is attributed to Indo-European (or Proto-Indo-European: PIE), the unattested prehistoric catch-all parent base of most European and some Asian languages.

The modern English word has been and is still applied to various things appearing in some way to resemble a mouse, particularly in nautical jargon (mid-1800s); this is also how the term comes to be applied to a black eye (recorded from 1842) and, in the 1960s, to a computer mouse.

The word 'mouser', in the sense of an animal - especially, but not necessarily, a cat - which is skilled at catching mice, is first recorded in English in the 1300s.

Answer 2

The language of origin of the word "mouse" is Old English. It comes from the word "mus" in Old English.