dormouse
Americannoun
-
dormice
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of dormouse
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English dormowse, dormoise; etymology obscure; perhaps Anglo-French derivative of Old French dormir “to sleep,” with final syllable reanalyzed as mouse, but no such Anglo-French word is known; see dormant, mouse
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The country's flora and fauna will feature on them all, with animals including the red squirrel, puffin and dormouse depicted.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2025
To test this, they took skeletal muscle samples from two small hibernators -- the Thirteen-lined ground squirrel and the Garden dormouse -- and two large hibernators -- the American black bear and brown bear.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 20, 2024
The squat, dinosaur-eating mammal Repenomamus was about the size of a badger, the early placental mammal Eomaia was about the size of a shrew, and the spiky Spinolestes was about as tiny as a dormouse.
From Slate ● Feb. 20, 2023
Some people can also echolocate by clicking their tongues, a behavior shared by only a few other animals, including tenrecs, a shrew-like animal from Madagascar, and the Vietnamese pygmy dormouse, which is effectively blind.
From National Geographic ● Feb. 3, 2021
The dormouse rubbed its liquid black eyes with its forepaws and blinked at the fading daylight.
From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
The country is now embarking on an expensive building boom, sparking outrage at unsightly transmission towers and the potential harm to bats, dormice and other local wildlife.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
Suffolk County Council demanded information about the impact on hedgerows, which are home to bats and dormice.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
However ongoing efforts to restore their populations have seen more than 1,000 dormice reintroduced into 25 woodland habitats in 13 English counties since 1993.
From BBC ● May 19, 2024
"While the Romans had to wait centuries for pasta, they chowed down on dormice in fish sauce," he said.
From BBC ● May 4, 2024
The capture of the dormice would prove an even more devious avenue to the conquest of Redwall, provided he played his cards right.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
