mouse-likeadj.adv.

1652 T. Peters Remedie against Ruine 9 Lions are free from mous-like feare.

1683 Fifteen Real Comforts of Matrimony xiii. 101 How many traps and baits that Harlot Pleasure lays up and down in every corner for Mouse-like men.

1757 tr. Boerhaavre's Acad. Lectures Physic VI. 201 It is called mouse-like, or creeping, because from a full Pulse, it becomes, by degrees, none at all, like as the Tail of a Mouse grows gradually smaller nearer its Extremity or Tip.

1834 S. T. Coleridge Marginalia (1980) I. 325 Querulous mouse-like Squeak and Nibble.

1992 MacWorld June 158/3 Most use a mouselike device (called a puck) or pen that is moved across the drawing surface, causing the cursor to follow on the screen.

1816 J. Wolcot Progress of Admiration 111, in Wks. Peter Pindar II. 276 How sighs the hand within the gauze to creep, Mouse-like, and on the snowy hills to sleep.

1874 L. Carr Judith Gwynne I. vi. 172 She crept mouse~like to the bedside.

1932 Times Lit. Suppl. 9 June 417/3 There was no real taming of Lady Caroline, however mouselike she, as a novelist..might sit among the literary ladies of Bloomsbury.