Unlike smelling a rat, smelling a mouse isn’t necessarily a bad thing — you could smell a mouse, thereby sussing out that someone has good news to share, or just a fun prank to play. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Smell a Mouse”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yes, hi. This is Jan from Abilene, Texas.
Hey, Jan.
How you doing? What’s going on?
I’m doing great. How are you?
Just well, thank you.
What can we help you with?
Well, whenever my parents would do something special for you, maybe give you a toy or take you to the park, they would say to me, they’d say, who did this for you? Who gave that to you? And I would say, you did, you did. And they would always come back with, do you smell a mouse? And I just grew up thinking that was a common phrase. And it wasn’t until I got married and maybe I would cook a special meal for my husband and he would comment on it and say, that was a great meal. And I would say, who cooked it for you? And, of course, he would say, you did. And I would say, well, do you smell a mouse? And he would say, Jan, I have no clue what you’re talking about. So I just wanted to know if that was just something that was, you know, peculiar to my family. And that has always been a very sweet, endearing phrase to me because of, well, the connotation it was used in as I was growing up.
Okay.
That’s lovely.
Wow, that is lovely.
That’s a great story.
Here’s the thing. This is directly related to I smell a rat. Only, I smell a rat is almost exclusively negative. It means you suspect something is amiss or you suspect something bad is going on. I smell a mouse just means that you suspect that things aren’t as they seem. And so they could seem positive and actually be negative, but they could actually seem negative and be positive, or it could seem normal and actually be unusual. And so as far back as the 1850s, we find many examples of I smell a mouse or to smell a mouse. Sometimes it means that a prank has been played. And when the sucker or the victim figures it out, he’s like, oh, I smell a mouse. Because he gets it that his leg is being pulled. But sometimes it’s similar to what you’re describing where someone walks in the house and realizes that things are different. You know, there are new curtains and the table set and a cake is being baked. And they’re like, I smell a mouse, which means there’s good news in the offing, right?
Yeah. And interestingly, there’s a similar expression in German. You can either smell a mouse or notice a mouse, and the same idea applies, that you’re suspecting something. So it’s got a long history throughout the United States of basically meaning that you suspect something isn’t as it seemed. And again, not negative like I smell a rat. It’s often positive.
Oh, great.
Well, I have, you know, just never found anyone that was familiar or that their family had used the term. And I just have always been curious about it.
You’re doing the right thing. Spread that to your grandkids and they’ll spread it to theirs and that term will last forever.
Yep.
And you’re definitely not the only ones.
Well, great.
That’s good to hear.
Okie doke, Jan.
Well, we appreciate your calling.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
What have you been saying in your family for generations? Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.
