Languages are forever evolving. A good thing, no doubt. Change is an essential part of growth and development. Additionally, change bears the DNA of our history. Were it not for colonisation, words like ‘catamaran’, ‘bungalow’ and ‘baksheesh’ wouldn’t have become common usage. Not that I hear people saying catamaran, bungalow or baksheesh on a daily basis.

However, we know that in English, the meaning of some words gets usurped. It’s like a takeover has been enacted. A word that once meant only one thing has suddenly ceded its ownership, lent it to another, sometimes for good.

Mouse, for example. Almost up to the Seventies, ‘A mouse in the house’ meant only one thing. The primary images were ‘whiskers’, ‘grey furry bodies’, ‘pink tails’ ‘pink ears’, ‘startled, feet-off-the-ground screams’, ‘dashing to find a broomstick or a slipper’ and, of course, the associated term, ‘rodent’. Two rodents were simply ‘mice’. (Leading versifiers in ages past to ponder the irregularities of grammar and usage, as in ‘if one is a mouse and two are mice, why can’t a house in plural be hice?’

Good point. Nobody’s come up with a plausible explanation thus far. We know, too, that grammar and its inconsistencies has left many a grammarian head-scratching and some even hairless — anything but hirsute in the pursuit of an answer.) After the Seventies, mouse in its plural generally got accepted as mouses and, of course, the image changed, too. These objects were given a field upon which to roam — called a mouse pad — and became items that the population in general advanced upon with interest and anticipation, rather than retreated from in revulsion.

Of course, the newly-christened mouse sat day and night beside one’s computer and, in its re-invented status, did the computer no harm. No wires and cables were gnawed through. After 30 years, if the current generation is heard discussing a ‘mouse’ you can bet anything — put your house or all your hice on it — that they are discussing the computer gizmo. The usurper.

As for the mouse of old, the one with the whiskers et al, it has been demoted to the wider, general status of ‘rat’. I say more general, because the mouse’s scientific name is actually ‘mus’ while the rat is ‘rattus’. It is only the next stage of classification that puts them both together under the heading ‘murinae’. Like mouse, ‘bachelor’ in English used to mean only one thing: an eligible young man. A man of means. A man that many a calculating mother has kept a sharp eye out for, (with marriage to her daughter in mind, no doubt.) I’m willing to bet there have been some prospective mothers-in-law who’ve happened to keep an eye upon what they thought was an esteemed bachelor only to discover that he’s already been married and has kids of his own.

Gender amicability

The term ‘bachelor’ has been thoroughly commandeered by colleges and universities. It is, as we know, the lowest degree on the ‘degree spectrum’ and, yes, those prospective mothers-in-law might even look down their noses if a young man were to say, “I am a bachelor of literature”. Their looks might imply, ‘Bachelor? You’ve got a long way to go young man, before you can ask for my daughter’s hand. Go get your Masters.”

Which, of course, is another term that’s given up its original meaning. A master, these days, is just a school teacher (generalised like the mouse) in the name of gender amicability. We don’t do master and mistress any more. In defence, however, mistress back in the day didn’t refer to a lady school teacher.

“I am the master and this is my mistress” even in the Seventies had a very different ring to it, especially if one was trying to say, honestly, “I am the master [of this class] and this is my co-helper.” Rumour has it, though, that as with all things cyclic, with technology racing ahead and the computer mouse slowly becoming irrelevant, old ‘mousie’ might yet regain his appellation of old.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.