shrew

• WordNet 3.6
  • n shrew small mouselike mammal with a long snout; related to moles
  • n shrew a scolding nagging bad-tempered woman
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• Interesting fact: In all of Shakespeare's works and excluding Roman numerals only one word begins with the letter "X." Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, appears in The Taming of the Shrew.
• • Shrew (Zoöl) Any small insectivore of the genus Sorex and several allied genera of the family Sorecidæ. In form and color they resemble mice, but they have a longer and more pointed nose. Some of them are the smallest of all mammals.
  • Shrew Originally, a brawling, turbulent, vexatious person of either sex, but now restricted in use to females; a brawler; a scold. "A man . . . grudgeth that shrews i. e., bad men] have prosperity, or else that good men have adversity.""A man had got a shrew to his wife, and there could be no quiet in the house for her."
  • v. t Shrew To beshrew; to curse. "I shrew myself."
  • a Shrew Wicked; malicious.
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• Interesting fact: The pigmy shrew a relative of the mole is the smallest mammal in North America. It weighs 1/14 ounce less than a dime.
• • n shrew A wicked or evil person; a malignant person.
  • n shrew A woman of a perverse, violent, or malignant temper; a scold; a termagant.
  • n shrew An evil thing; a great danger.
  • n shrew A planet of evil or malignant aspect or influence.
  • shrew Wicked; evil; ill-natured; unkind.
  • shrew To make evil; deprave.
  • shrew To curse; beshrew.
  • n shrew A small insectivorous mammal of the genus Sorex or family Soricidæ; a shrew-mouse. They are all small, greatly resembling mice in size, form, color, and general appearance (whence the name shrew-mouse), but belong to a different order(Insectivora. not Rodentia). They may be distinguished at a glance by the long sharp snout. They are widely distributed, chiefly in the northern hemisphers, and the species are numerous, of several different genera, particularly Sorex, which contains more than any other. The little animals are very voracious, and devour great quantities of insects and worms; but there is no foundation in fact for the vulgar notion that shrews are poisonous, or for any other of the popular superstitions respecting these harmless little creatures. The shrews have usually a musky odor, due to the secretion of some special subcutaneous glands with which they are provided, and in some of the larger kinds this scent is very strong. Among the shrews are the most diminutive of all mammals, with the head and body less than 2 inches long; others are two or three times as large as this. The common shrew of Europe is Sorex vulgaris. The commonest in the United States is a large short tailed species, Blarina brevicauda. The teeth of shrews are generally chestnut or reddish-black, but some shrews are white-toothed, as those of the genus Crocidura; some are aquatic, as the oared or oar-footed shrew, Crossopus fodiens of Europe, and Neosorex palustris of North America. The name is extended, with a qualifying term, to related animals of a different family, as the shrew-moles and desmans. See shrew-mole, elephant shrew, marsh-shrew, mole-shrew, musk-shrew. squirrel-shrew, water-shrew, and cuts under Blarina, desman, Petrodromus, Ptilocercus, Rhynchocyon, and Tupaia.
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• Interesting fact: Elephants and short-tailed shrews get by on only two hours of sleep a day.
• • n Shrew shrōō a brawling, troublesome woman: a scold: a family of insectivorous mammals closely resembling, in general form and appearance, the true mice and dormice—the head long, muzzle long and pointed
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• Washington Irving

  

  “Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.”

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