How the Romans saw a little mouse running under the skin when you flex your arm. Tap ▶ to hear each step read aloud.
Proto-Indo-European had a word *múh₂s: mouse. It is one of the oldest animal words we know.
It is still almost the same today: English mouse, German Maus, Latin mūs, Greek mŷs, Russian mysh’.
In Latin, mūs was a mouse and mūsculus was a little mouse.
When you bend your arm, the muscle moves and bulges under the skin, like a little mouse running under a blanket. So the Romans called a muscle a mūsculus.
The Greeks had the same idea: mŷs meant both mouse and muscle.
Doctors kept the Latin word, French made it muscle, and English took muscle in the 1500s.
The same mūsculus gave mussel, the shellfish, perhaps because a mussel looks like a small dark mouse. In French it became moule.
Muscles give strength, so muscle also means power.
Examples: to muscle in
(to push in by force), political muscle
, a muscle car
.
| mouse, mice | the same old word |
| mussel | the “little mouse” of the sea |
| muscular | with big muscles |
Muscle and moule (a mussel) are the same Latin little mouse. And souris, the French mouse, comes from another word, sorex.
“Flex your arm and the little mouse runs.”