Citations:creepmouse

Adjective: "(mildly pejorative) timid and unassuming in the extreme"

 * 1765, Anonymous, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, Houlston and Son (c. 1825-1838?), page 34:
 * Soon after, the tempest drove in four thieves, who not seeing such a little creep-mouse girl as Two-Shoes, lay down on the hay next to her, and began to talk over their exploits, and to settle plans for future robberies.
 * 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter XV:
 * "Indeed but you must, for we cannot excuse you. It need not frighten you; it is a nothing of a part, a mere nothing, not above half a dozen speeches altogether, and it will not much signify if nobody hears a word you say, so you may be as creepmouse as you like, but we must have you to look at."
 * 1860, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Ticknor and Fields (1860), page 160:
 * Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are creep-mouse manners; and thievish manners.
 * 1985, Jean Ure, After Thursday, Delacorte Press (1985), ISBN 9780385295482, page 161:
 * Abe had been enjoying himself, without so much as a thought in his head as to how she was getting on; why shouldn't she have her turn? She was sick of being boring and creepmouse. While the cat was away the mice deserved to play — at least they did if that was how the cat was going to behave.
 * 1990, John McAleer, "Satirizing The Academy", Chicago Tribune, 18 November 1990:
 * A box of manuscripts, buried with Ash by Ellen, his creepmouse widow, is opened; the lovers' final secrets are revealed. Ellen, we find, had never let Ash consummate their marriage.

Noun: "(mildly pejorative) an extremely timid and unassuming person"

 * 1831, Catherine Gore, Mothers and Daughters, Volume II, E. L. Carey & A. Hart/Allen & Ticknor (1834), page 62:
 * "Pho! pho ! — I do not believe a word of it. Lord Basingstoke is one of those shy young men who are very much attached to any one who will take the trouble of making love to them ; — one of those creepmice who run away with their mother's waiting-maid, or marry an actress for want of courage and patience to encounter the formalities of an honourable courtship.
 * 1907, Florence Hayllar, Nepenthes, William Blackwood and Sons (1907), page 5:
 * The knocking was repeated, — a very gentle knocking, which seemed to argue that the devil was in a polite and patient mood. I felt a little creepmouse myself as I heard it, but I got up, and leaving the quaking woman in the parlour, I went and opened the door.
 * 1995, Mary C. Sullivan, Catherin McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy, University of Notre Dame Press (1995), ISBN 9780268008116, page 39:
 * Catherine McAuley once mildly complained that the new foundation in Birr should have been made from nearby Tullamore, noting that "it is quite a shame to be such creepmouses in such a cause" (272). However, Catherine did not live long enough to see Tullamore catch fire in this respect.
 * 2004, William Deresiewicz, Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets, Columbia University Press (2004), ISBN 0231134142, pages 44-45:
 * Fanny and Anne experience no sudden recognition-cum-transformation— not, like Elinor, because they have nothing to reform, but because, like Wordsworth and Coleridge in their first-person lyrics, they practice a continual reappraisal of feeling and experience and are thus continually changing. Emma is not quite so heroic as these two creepmice, but her transformation is every bit as profound.
 * 2009, Laurie Viera Rigler, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Dutton (2009), ISBN 9780525950769, page 6:
 * Don't be such a frightened little creepmouse. I take a deep breath, look at the feet again, and giggle.
 * 2011, Barbara Hardy, "Twilight in Mansfield Parsonage", in Dorothea's Daughter and Other Nineteenth-Century Postscripts, Victorian Secrets Limited (2011), ISBN 9781906469245, page 29:
 * I was always too timid, too shy, a creepmouse as dear Tom once called me.