church mouse
noun
Simple meaning
A mouse living in a church.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
churchmowsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtʃɝtʃˈmaʊs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A mouse living in a church; used in similes to suggest a very poor person.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A mouse living in a church; used in similes to suggest a very poor person.
Used this way, church mouse is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.