Mouse or mouse: what is the correct definition?

We know what you are thinking: brave article more squirt. It seems the typical meme taken from a forum deep in the internet, but there are still people who argue about things like this. Who is right? Mouse or mouse? Well, it depends on how you look at it.

Index of contents

The term "mouse"

It turns out that in 1964 a very salacious gentleman named Douglas Engelbart invented a device to facilitate the use of computers at the time. These early models, in addition to occupying an entire room, had the charm that they needed every action to be typed on the keyboard (yes, including opening a folder). This obviously got on everyone's nerves and is what led Douglas's majo to design the device that we would later call mouse or mouse.

Prototype of the first mouse, 1964 The first name that was given to it was XY index since they are the coordinates of displacement by which it was moved and in addition both hands were needed to move it.

Instead, the term "mouse" was assigned to them by Stanford University while they were working on its development due to its evident similarities with the morphology of these rodents.

Xerox Star 8010 Mouse

In 1981, with the appearance of the first graphical user interfaces (GUI), their use was standardized since a pointing device was necessary to click on screen elements. This happened with the first mouse computer, the Xerox Star 8010. Apple would also jump on the bandwagon later, in 1984, with Lisa.

Mac Lisa computer with mechanical mouse

The term "mouse"

Returning to Spanish, what happens here is that what we call a semantic tracing (the literal translation of a term) was produced. This causes that both are admissible and correct in everyday speech since they are synonyms in both languages.

However, the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language dictates that since the semantic tracing exists, the correct thing in Spanish is to say mouse, not "mouse".

Conclusion: mouse or mouse?

Unless you are speaking in an Anglo-Saxon forum or portal (or English in general), the correct thing is that we always refer to this peripheral as mouse and not mouse .

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In contexts of encounters between speakers of various languages, the ideal is to use English terms to facilitate mutual understanding.