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A mousetrap is a small trap for catching a mouse, usually in a house. The old kind is a wooden base with a strong metal bar: you put a bit of food on it, and when the mouse touches it, the bar snaps down. The word is simply mouse plus trap, and that is still the meaning you will meet in shops and in stories. People stretch it. In Britain, cheap hard cheese is sometimes joked about as mousetrap, as if it were only good for bait. People also say “build a better mousetrap” to mean invent something clearly better than what we already have. As a verb, to mousetrap someone is uncommon: it means to catch them as a trap catches a mouse. And because a computer pointer is also a mouse, you will sometimes see the same spelling used for tricks that catch a computer mouse, or a user, on a screen — though actually, that is a side use. If someone says mousetrap with no extra context, they mean the animal trap.
捕鼠夾、捕鼠器
原始詞典資料7 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。
mousetrapnoun/ˈmaʊsˌtɹæp/
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A device for capturing or killing mice and other rodents.
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A website designed to open another copy of itself when the user tries to close the webpage.
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informalcookingfoodlifestyleOrdinary, everyday cheese.
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cookingfoodlifestyleA slice of bread or toast topped with cheese and then grilled or microwaved.
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historicalgovernmentmilitarypoliticsAn antisubmarine rocket used mainly during World War II by the US Navy and US Coast Guard.
- Besides depth charges, they were armed with smaller forward firing antisubmarine rocket launchers called mousetraps. Fired in groups, these rockets detonated when they contacted a submarine.
mousetrapverb/ˈmaʊsˌtɹæp/
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To trap; to trick or fool (someone) into a bad situation.
- He hoped to bring the rebels out of their trenches for a showdown battle somewhere south of the Wilderness, that gloomy expanse of scrub oaks and pines where Lee had mousetrapped Joe Hooker exactly a year earlier.
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To prevent (the user) from leaving a website by opening another copy when it is closed.
- The scammer is paid for each new visitor directed to his site. There is nothing wrong except that the user finds it impossible to leave the site because he is mousetrapped.
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。