Did you know there's a mouse in "erosion" and a fly in "musket"? Let's play exterminator and find out how these pesky little critters infested these words.

The Latin verb "rodere" meant "to gnaw," so when the ancient Romans noticed mice nibbling on their cheese, they dubbed them "rodentia," ("those that gnaw"). (Am I making this up? Naw.) "Rodentia," of course, chewed its way into English as "rodent."

During the Middle Ages, an alchemist (or "Al the Chemist," as he was known during the election campaign) noticed that acid wore away metal in the same way "rodentia" gnawed on cheese, so he coined the verb "erode" to describe this process.

Later "erode" and "erosion" came to refer to any wearing away, be it literal or figurative.

There's also a "mouse" in muscle. If you hold out your arm, bend it at about a 135-degree angle and contract your muscles (DO try this at home), you'll notice that your biceps becomes an oval mound with a cord-like tendon extending to the elbow.

During Roman times, someone (perhaps Al the Winedrinker) decided that this structure with its trailing tail looked like a mouse.

So because the Latin word for a mouse was "mus," he called it a "musculus" (little mouse). (Apparently, Al the Winedrinker was no Charles Atlas.) "Musculus," of course, eventually scampered into English as "muscle."

"Muscle," in turn, produced the word "mussel," meaning a marine mollusk, but no one's sure whether this is because a mussel, when tucked into its shell, looks like a muscle or a mouse.

"Musket" is derived not from the mouse, but from the fly. The Latin word for a fly was "musca," which Italian adopted as "mosca."

The Italians called the arrow shot by a crossbow a "moschetto" (a diminutive of "mosca") because it flew through the air like a fly.

During the 1500s, when the Italian army replaced the crossbow with a heavy, large-caliber firearm, they gave the new weapon the same name as the old - "moschetto."

Soon the French adopted "moschetto" as "mousquette" (or "mosquet"), and by the late 1500s "mousquette" was appearing in English as "muskette," later "musket."

The Latin "mosca" also buzzes in another English word for a pest: "mosquito," adopted from the Spanish "mosca" (fly). So when you shoot a musket at a mosquito, you're fighting "fly"er with "fly"er.

*Rob Kyff is a teacher and writer in West Hartford. Write to him in care of The Courant, Features Department, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115, or by e-mail at

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