Monday, July 28, 2003		Feature

MOUSE is an important input device used in a computer. It is a device that is quite helpful in selecting various utilities on the PC and has made the computer operations easy and versatile.

When I got a computer installed at my house some years ago, my wife asked me why a mouse was so named. I was not so sure about it so I replied casually: "Because it looks like a mouse". I consulted a few books, including by some foreign authors. Nearly all of them gave the same explanation. Some of them even went to the extent of mentioning ‘mice’ as the plural of ‘mouse.’ How wrong pronunciation or wrong understanding of a word can play havoc with its meaning was made obvious by the semi-literate wife of a friend who wanted to know if the computer also needed a ‘Steplaser’ like a refrigerator and TV. I was at my wits end until I realised that she was talking about a stabiliser.

When I complained that a virus had infected my computer, a friend of mine retorted: "Anything which lives near the mouse all time is bound to get a virus. You must immediately get inoculated lest plague breaks out."

Coming to mouse, I have to admit that I did not know the meaning till I attended a refresher course on e-commerce at Panjab University, Chandigarh. During his lecture, the speaker asked us, a batch of 30 college lecturers of commerce, the meaning of mouse. Most of us kept mum and those who answered gave funny replies by comparing its two buttons with the two eyes, wire to tail, ball to the feet and body to the mouse body. It was then that the learned speaker explained that it is an acronym found by the first letters of five English words that collectively make a meaningful sense. The words are Manually Operated Utility Selecting Equipment. That is why Mouse should always be written as MOUSE.