c1500 in R. H. Robbins Secular Lyrics 14th & 15th Cent. (1952) 20 (MED) Ser Iohn ys taken In my mouse-trappe..he gropith so nyslye a-bought my lape, I haue no pore to sa[y hym nay].

1652 Mercurius Pragmaticus 25 May 11 The Adamitish Lady with her Naked Breasts, to tempt the Fondling to the Devil's Mouse-trap.

1716 C. Bullock Cobler of Preston ii. 15 My Wife, it seems.., drew this lewd Miller into the very Mousetrap of Iniquity.

1764 T. Bridges Homer Travestie II. v. 11 If you meet the whoring Goddess, Ram thy stiff weapon through her boddice; Take care you come not near her thighs, For there a dang'rous mouse trap lies.

1879 Pearl Nov. 154 Oh, give me a damsel of blooming fifteen, With two luscious thighs and a mouse-trap between.

1893 Lustful Turk (new ed.) 180 Poor girls, how their little mouse traps must gap [sic] at the sight!

1977 E. J. Trimmer et al. Visual Dict. Sex (1978) 127 Vagina & vulva.., mousetrap.

1983 Opus Pistorum 12 Her mousetrap stretches when she puts one of her fingers in.

1577 tr. ‘F. de L'Isle’ Legendarie sig. Fvij They..called the kings letters patents the mousetrappes to catch fooles.

1613 J. Hayward Liues III. Normans 12 Others demanded if he had any more mouse-traps to lead them into.

1674 in O. Airy Essex Papers (1890) I. 256 A moustrap laid by Orrery & that gang.

1699 B. E. New Dict. Canting Crew The Parson's Mouse-trap, Marriage.

1767 I. Bickerstaff Love in City iii. iii. 53 Matrimony..is like a mouse trap, it is easy to get into, but hard to get out of.

1837 W. T. Moncrieff Sam Weller ii. ii. 16 A public-house is the devil's own mousetrap.

1887 H. R. Haweis Light of Ages v. 139 He [sc. the Greek] did not look upon the senses as so many mouse-traps.

1945 R. Hargreaves Enemy at Gate 84 Wounded at the ‘mouse-trap’ of Dettingen, he was present at Fontenoy.

1966 M. R. D. Foot SOE in France viii. 203 All the agents taken in the Villa des Bois mousetrap at Marseilles..were in the noisome Béleyme prison at Périgueux.

1984 J. Barnes Flaubert's Parrot (1985) (BNC) 69 The business-card..was put there by..Maxime du Camp, who had scampered ahead..and laid out this little mousetrap for his friend's sensibility.

1727 M. Davys Accomplish'd Rake 62 Shall Man, that noble Creature Man, tye up his capacious Inclinations, and force them into the Circumference of a Mouse-trap, while he has the Globe to furnish his Desires with new and many Joys.

1839 Tennyson in Ld. Tennyson Mem. (1897) I. 171 The house at Tunbridge is too small, a mere mouse-trap.

1885 Harper's Mag. Mar. 545/2 They have hunted up a..house..—the most dingy..little mouse-trap you ever saw.

1903 Dial. Notes 2 342 Mouse-trap, an implement ‘for cutting and fishing out rope when matted in the well. It will also take out small pieces of iron or steel, or any small object’.

1929 Papers Michigan Acad. Sci., Arts & Lett. 10 309 Mouse-trap, a plant at Willoughby, near Cleveland, built for the manufacture of Lewisite. It was so called by the workmen because every one who entered it did so under an agreement not to leave until the end of the war.

1941 San Francisco Call-Bull. 22 Jan. 22/4 Soldier dictionary... mousetrap, submarine.

1941 Reader's Digest Feb. 54 The boys of Britain's R.A.F. have developed a language all their own... ‘Roller skates’ are tanks, and ‘mousetraps’ submarines.

1953 B. Rowland & W. B. Boyd U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II 137 The NDRC project..became an attempt to combine the respective virtues of the Hedgehog and rockets. By the spring of 1942 the solution was at hand in the Mousetrap, an antisubmarine projector that launched a salvo of sixteen 7″ .2 rockets ahead of the attacking ship.

1957 Amer. Speech 32 194 Mouse trap, any device of an unorthodox nature attached to a handgun for the purpose of making it more accurate or, less frequently, of making it function more smoothly.

1983 MicroComputer Printout Sept. 45/2 Predictably Apricot has a mouse for optional cursor control, but..it also boasts a ‘mousetrap’: a purpose-built mouse ‘port’ conveniently situated on the keyboard which prevents the mouse obstructing the printer port.

1882 Atlanta (Georgia) Constit. 11 May 4 Current Comment. The Value of Good Work, Ralph Waldo Emerson. If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse trap than his neighbors, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.]

1934 N.Y. Times 5 July 22/2 How did the Bambino [sc. Babe Ruth] become practically a world figure? By building better mousetraps?

1938 J. Dana Sutter of Calif. xli. 332 All the world seemed to be beating a path to John Sutter's door. Which proves a gold mine as potent a lure as a better mousetrap.

1949 Capitol News from Hollywood Jan. 2/2 There will be vast and radical changes in records this year and as with all things new and novel, there are those who already are resisting the inevitable—and traditional—American urge to create a better mousetrap.

1971 ‘A. Landers’ in San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chron. 28 Mar. 9/2 The woman who is constantly checking on her man will not make him more honest, she will simply make him more inventive. It's a fact of life that when woman builds a better mousetrap, nature breeds a better mouse.

1990 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 19 July 3/4 Ingenuity was not spent on building a better mousetrap but on inventing goldener parachutes.

2001 Amer. Rifleman Feb. 76/2 Gunwriters often claimed that shooters would beat a path away from belted cases and to the ‘better mousetrap’ of a beltless magnum.

1936 Sat. Evening Post 21 Nov. 67/1 He called the signal for a mousetrap play. A mousetrap play is one in which an opposing lineman is purposely permitted to rush through, and then he's neatly slaughtered in the backfield, as the team with the ball cracks right back through the opening he left.

1947 San Francisco News 19 June 22/1 The screen pass should be used often, not only as a gainer but to keep the opposition wary... Ditto for mousetrap.

1956 San Francisco News 9 Sept. 25/1 Most coaches and observers credit Glenn Scobey Warner with an imposing list of football innovations. Among these are the..mousetrap plays, the unbalanced backfield, [etc.].

1977 San Francisco Chron. 12 Nov. 40 The trap is fundamental to pro football. The term is almost as old as the game itself; it was originally called a ‘mousetrap block’.