DORMOUSE (dormice)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected form: dormice   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does dormouse mean? 

• DORMOUSE (noun)
  The noun DORMOUSE has 1 sense:

1. small furry-tailed squirrel-like Old World rodent that becomes torpid in cold weather

  Familiarity information: DORMOUSE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DORMOUSE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Small furry-tailed squirrel-like Old World rodent that becomes torpid in cold weather

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("dormouse" is a kind of...):

gnawer; rodent (relatively small placental mammals having a single pair of constantly growing incisor teeth specialized for gnawing)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "dormouse"):

Glis glis; loir (large European dormouse)

hazel mouse; Muscardinus avellanarius (a variety of dormouse)

lerot (dormouse of southern Europe and northern Africa)

Holonyms ("dormouse" is a member of...):

family Gliridae; Gliridae (dormice and other Old World forms)

 Context examples 

She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)