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[OE] Mouse is an ancient word, with relatives today in all the Germanic and Slavic languages. Its Indo-European ancestor was *mūs-, which produced Greek mūs, Latin mūs (something of a dead end: the modern Romance languages have abandoned it), Sanskrit mūs (source, via a very circuitous route, of English musk), and prehistoric Germanic *mūs-. This has evolved into German maus, Dutch muis, Swedish and Danish mus, and English mouse. And the Slavic branch of the ‘mouse’-family includes Russian mysh’, Polish mysz, and Serbo- Croat mish. English relatives of mouse include muscle and mussel (ultimately the same word) and marmot [17], which goes back to a Vulgar Latin accusative form *mūrem montis ‘mouse of the mountain’.
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