mickey mouse
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mickey mouse
slang A reference to the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. Often capitalized.
1. noun Something that is trivial or insignificant. All I ever do at this job is a lot of mickey mouse.
2. noun A police officer. You hear those sirens? Mickey Mouse is getting closer—we need to move it.
3. noun A small piece of paper containing LSD and imprinted with an image of Mickey Mouse. Got any mickey mouse I can buy?
4. adjective Trivial or insignificant. She needs to get a real job instead of wasting time with this Mickey Mouse internship.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
mickey mouse
1. n. nonsense; something trivial. (From the world-famous mouse character by the same name, owned by The Walt Disney Company.) This is just a lot of mickey mouse.
2. mod. trivial; time wasting; lousy. I want out of this mickey mouse place.
3. n. a police officer. (Streets.) Mickey mouse is hanging around asking about you.
4. n. a bit of blotter impregnated with LSD with a picture of The Walt Disney Company’s Mickey Mouse on it. (Drugs.) How much is the mickey mouse?
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
mickey mouse
Trivial, unimportant, petty. The term, sometimes capitalized (Mickey Mouse), alludes to the cartoon character appearing in Walt Disney films which by the mid-1930s had become childish and silly. It acquired widespread use during World War II, when soldiers used it to describe absurd regulations and petty discipline, and thereafter was applied to almost anything. Studs Terkel used it in American Dreams (1979), “We got a Mickey Mouse educational system that doesn’t teach us . . . how the government works.”
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer