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A dormouse is a small European animal with a long, thick, furry tail. It looks a little like a mouse, and books often call it one — though actually it is not a true mouse; it belongs to its own group. It lives in woods and hedges, and the famous thing about it is how much it sleeps: it sleeps through the winter, and even in summer it can doze for a long time. That sleepy picture is why Alice in Wonderland has a Dormouse who keeps falling asleep at the tea party. It is a nature word. You would not use it for a house mouse, and you only use it for a person as a joke, meaning someone always nodding off.
睡鼠
組成From Middle English dormowse; the origin is not certain. It may be an old dialect dor- (from Old Norse dár, “numb, half-asleep”) + mous (“mouse”). People sometimes guess it comes from French dormir (“to sleep”) plus “mouse,” but no such Anglo-Norman word has been found, so that sleep-story is only a guess.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
dormousenoun/ˈdɔɹ.maʊs/
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Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.
- For a long time the dormouse and polecat had seemed to him overfeeble enemies for his restless valour, even as the granary floor seemed to afford too narrow a field. Every day he read the papers of the previous day in the servants' hall of the houses he visited, and it appeared to him that this war in America, which was hailed as the awakening of the spirit of liberty and justice in the New World, ought to produce a revolution in France.
- Restoration such as this must work around wildlife habitats, and NR came to discover that almost the entire line was a haven for dormice.
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Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.
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Any of several species of small, mostly European rodents of the family Gliridae.
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A person who sleeps a great deal, or who falls asleep readily (by analogy with the sound hibernation of the dormouse).
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。