Mince vs Mouse - What's the difference?
mince | mouse |
(uncountable) Finely chopped meat.
(uncountable) Finely chopped mixed fruit used in Christmas pies; mincemeat.
(countable) An affected (often dainty or short and precise) gait.
* Truman Capote, Children on their Birthdays : (rfdate)
* John Fowles: (rfdate):
* 2010 , Tom Zoellner, Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World :
(countable) An affected manner, especially of speaking; an affectation.
* George Bernard Shaw: (rfdate)
* 1928 , R. M. Pope, in The Education Outlook , volume 80, page 285:
* 2008 , Opie Read, The Colossus , page 95:
To make less; make small.
To lessen; diminish; to diminish in speaking; speak of lightly or slightingly; minimise.
(rare) To effect mincingly.
(cooking) To cut into very small pieces; to chop fine.
To suppress or weaken the force of; to extenuate; to palliate; to tell by degrees, instead of directly and frankly; to clip, as words or expressions; to utter half and keep back half of.
* Dryden
To affect; to pronounce affectedly or with an accent.
* 1869 , Alexander J. Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation, with special reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer , part 1, page 194:
* 1905 , George Henderson, The Gaelic Dialects, IV'', in the ''Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie , published by Kuno Meyer and L. Chr. Stern, volume 5, page 98:
* 1915 , Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark :
To walk with short steps; to walk in a prim, affected manner.
* The daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go. -- III. 16.
* I'll turn two mincing steps into a manly stride. —
*
To act or talk with affected nicety; to affect delicacy in manner.
(archaic) To diminish the force of.
Any small rodent of the genus Mus .
*
*:At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs.
(lb) A member of the many small rodent and marsupial species resembling such a rodent.
A quiet or shy person.
(lb) (plural'' mice''' ''or, rarely,'' ' mouses ) An input device that is moved over a pad or other flat surface to produce a corresponding movement of a pointer on a graphical display.
(lb) Hematoma.
(lb) A turn or lashing of spun yarn or small stuff, or a metallic clasp or fastening, uniting the point and shank of a hook to prevent its unhooking or straighening out.
(lb)
:(Shakespeare)
A match used in firing guns or blasting.
(lb) A small model of (a fragment of) (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory) with desirable properties (depending on the context).
To move cautiously or furtively, in the manner of a mouse (the rodent) (frequently used in the phrasal verb to mouse around ).
To hunt or catch mice (the rodents), usually of cats.
(nautical) To close the mouth of a hook by a careful binding of marline or wire.
(computing) To navigate by means of a computer mouse.
* 1988 , MacUser: Volume 4
* 2009 , Daniel Tunkelang, Faceted Search (page 35)
(obsolete, nonce, transitive) To tear, as a cat devours a mouse.
* Shakespeare
In lang=en terms the difference between mince and mouse
is that mince is to act or talk with affected nicety; to affect delicacy in manner while mouse is to hunt or catch mice (the rodents), usually of cats.As nouns the difference between mince and mouse
is that mince is (uncountable) finely chopped meat while mouse is any small rodent of the genus mus .As verbs the difference between mince and mouse
is that mince is to make less; make small while mouse is to move cautiously or furtively, in the manner of a mouse (the rodent) (frequently used in the phrasal verb to mouse around ).mince
English
Alternative forms
* (l)Noun
- Mince tastes really good fried in a pan with some chopped onion and tomato.
- During Christmas time my dad loves to eat mince pies.
- A wiry little girl in a starched, lemon-colored party dress, she sassed along with a grownup mince , one hand on her hip, the other supporting a spinsterish umbrella.
- She was just the same; she had a light way of walking and she always wore flat heels so she didn't have that mince like most girls. She didn't think at all about the men when she moved. Like a bird.
- His skin was china pale, he walked with a slight mince , and his silver mustache was always trimmed sharp; it was his custom to send a bouquet of pink carnations to the wives of men with whom he dined.
- A very moderate degree of accomplishment in this direction would make an end of stage smart speech, which, like the got-up Oxford mince and drawl of a foolish curate, is the mark of a snob.
- And, further, who has not heard what someone has christened the "Oxford" mince , where every consonant is mispronounced and every vowel gets a wrong value?
- [...] a smiling man, portly and impressive, coming toward them with a dignified mince in his walk.
Quotations
* 1849 , Herman Melville, Mardi, and a Voyage Thither : *: Not, — let me hurry to say, — that I put hand in tar bucket with a squeamish air, or ascended the rigging with a Chesterfieldian mince .Verb
(minc)- Butchers often use machines to mince meat.
- I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say — "I love you." —
- To mince one's words
- a minced oath
- Siren, now mince the sin, / And mollify damnation with a phrase.
- In some districts of England ll'' is sounded like ''w'', thus ''bowd'' (booud) for BOLD, ''bw'' (buu) for BULL, ''caw (kau) for CALL. But this pronunciation is merely a provincialism, and not to be imitated unless you wish to mince like these blunderers.
- One may hear some speakers in Oxford mince brother'' into ''brover'' (brëvë); ''Bath'' into ''Baf''; ''both'' into ''bof .
- "The preacher said it was sympathetic," she minced the word, remembering Mr. Larsen's manner.
- At the last moment Mollie, the foolish, pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones's trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of sugar.
- I love going to gay bars and seeing drag queens mince around on stage.
Usage notes
Current usage in the sense of "weaken the force of" is limited to the phrase "mince words"; e.g., "I won't mince words with you".Derived terms
* mincemeat * mince pie * mince words * minsitiveReferences
* ----mouse
English
Noun
(mice)Hypernyms
* (small rodent) rodentCoordinate terms
* (small rodent) rat * (input device) joystick, trackpad, trackball, pointing stickDerived terms
* (as) quiet as a mouse * cat and mouse * church mouse * deer mouse * dormouse * fieldmouse * house mouse * kangaroo mouse * mouseable, mousable * mouse button * mouse click * mouse-ear * mouse mat * mouse pad * mouser * mousetrap * mousy * optical mouse * play cat and mouse * poor as a church mouse * when the cat's away the mice will playVerb
(mous)- Captain Higgins moused the hook with a bit of marline to prevent the block beckets from falling out under slack.
- I had just moused to the File menu and the pull-down menu repeated the menu bar's hue a dozen shades lighter.
- Unlike the Flamenco work, the Relation Browser allows users to quickly explore a document space using dynamic queries issued by mousing over facet elements in the interface.
- [Death] mousing the flesh of men.