So I was thinking just now about how when I was in high school, a lot of the time in class we would just be taking turns reading the textbook out loud. And I thought to myself, “Wow- that was pretty mickeymouse.” (Incidentally, what’s the deal with reading out loud in class? Even the good teachers made us do it. What’s the rationale, other than enabling the teacher to get away with having no lesson plan?)
I frequently hear the word “mickeymouse” used to describe people’s Army experiences, too. I would say that a “mickeymouse” situation is one in which the authorities have laid down rules which seem niggling and ridiculous (and oftentimes childish, but not necessarily so,) but which they insist must be followed to the letter. When did Mickey Mouse first get attached to that kind of thing, and why?
A wealthy man has a kid who is very big kid for his age. It’s Halloween and the father ask his son what he would like to be. The boy tells him he wants to be the most famous Disney character of all. Worried, the father is afraid he won’t be able to find anything that fits. After a long search, the father finally returns home and hands his son some documents indicating he now owned Microsoft. Confused the son asks for an explaination.
Well, his father replied, it’s the biggest mickeymouse oufit I could find.
In the UK, it is used to describe something which is either make-believe (“I paid £50 for a printer on the internet, but it never arrived; turns out it was a Mickey-Mouse company”) does the job, but is not robust (“Now this is a proper drill, not like that Mickey-Mouse thing you’ve got”)
Can’t back this up, but I’ve always just assumed that it means ‘less-than-real’ (because cartoons are less than real).
Len Deighton’s novel “Goodbye Mickey Mouse” is set in 1944. IIRC it starts with a slang dictionary definition of the MM term which notes it as being WW2 US military in origin.
Just as an interesting aside, Sinclair Lewis used **Minnie Mouse in a derogatory sense, in It Can’t Happen Here. This book, dealing with a fictional fascist victory in the American election of 1936, included an American analogue to the SS called the “Minute Men”, or MM’s. The dissident characters in the story took to calling them “Minnie Mouses”.
They also say that in Australia, the term means “cheap and unreliable.” That is the sense I have always heard it in. The explanation given to my (by a high school religion teacher) was that when the first MM watches came out, they were very popular. Soon the market was flooded with cheap knock-offs. The bad performance of the knock-offs led to the negative adjective (and perhaps also to the sense of something you thought would be good turning out not to be.)
Can’t answer the OP, but I can answer that one – it’s a last-ditch measure for classes where most of the students either will not read the text on their own, or have trouble processing written information. In all too many high schools, at least one of these conditions is so widespread that text-reading becomes routine.
(That’s the charitable explanation. Some teachers, of course, are indeed being lazy.)
If you look at the very early Mickey Mouse cartoons, everything looks as though it’s on the verge of falling apart, so the term may be meant to invoke that motif.
It also may be referring to something that’s done in a frivolous manner, since there’s nothing more frivolous than a Mickey Mouse cartoon.
I believe the earliest usage is by animators-- To “Mickey-mouse” the soundtrack means the animation is done first, and then the sound-effects and music are added to coincide. This “back-to-front” approach makes for less natural-feeling animation.(This is the way “Steamboat Willie” was done.)
The earlies cite in print that Lighter can give to mean anything remotely referring to something “insipid,corny,lacking importance”(M-W) would be from “1938,in Tamony Americanisms(No. 30) 4: Introduces an original style combining the precise tempos and rhythms of mickey-mouse-moosic with the anything-can-happen type of swing and novelty numbers…A strictly mickey mouse band is still box office.”
The fact that it was in print in a Jazz meaning that indicated it was mundane was certainly using it in a derogatory manner.
Larry Mudd’s theory could perhaps be right about the animators, but can’t be examined without some cites.
That is the way I always heard “mickey-mouse”, too–jerry-rigged, temporary, or substandard. A similar phrase comes to mind: “held together with chewing gum and baler twine.” Often used of equipment or organizations, as in, “We saved up and finally bought a real _______, not the mickey-mouse home-made one we’d been using” or “I don’t think you should donate to that group; they’re pretty mickey-mouse and don’t have the good administration to take care of the money.”
I’ve lived in western Canada for most of my life, but this particular phrase I’ve heard most from my dad, who’s an American, born in Chicago but lived all across the lower 48. So I have no idea which regional meaning mine is…Dad’s got several other phrases that I haven’t heard anywhere else, as well.
Often used of equipment or organizations, as in, “We saved up and finally bought a real _______, not the mickey-mouse home-made one we’d been using” or “I don’t think you should donate to that group; they’re pretty mickey-mouse and don’t have the good administration to take care of the money.”