Why is it that when referring to more than one of the disease-carrying rodents, they are referred to as mice, but when referring to the hardware used to navigate a computer screen, they are referred to as mouses??

Just guessing (as usual):

'Computer mouse' is a noun-noun combination. Noun modifiers work only if enough people understand and use them. It's quite arbitrary. We can say, for example, 'war movie' or 'science fiction movie' but not 'love movie'. We can say 'moon rock', 'moon boot' (remember them?) and 'history book', but not 'moon book'. I guess it works like slang - if it's useful it sticks, if people keep saying 'huh?' you stop using it.

So, 'computer mouse' (or even just 'mouse', given enough context) works. 'Computer mice' doesn't work - it's not common enough, and suggests little, furry rodents operating computers. 'Computer mouses', on the other hand, can't be the furry little cheese-eaters, and so must be the computer gadgets. It's a useful distinction, and so has stuck.

Stand by for the jokes about mouse balls...

Here are several explanations of the correct terminology collected by the alt.usage.english newsgroup.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jelp01:
Why is it that when referring to more than one of the disease-carrying rodents, they are referred to as _mice_, but when referring to the hardware used to navigate a computer screen, they are referred to as _mouses_??

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I've never seen (or heard) mouses used as a plural for mouse in this context. I was going to say that I'd never heard it at all, but then I recalled some recent immigrants with a rodent problem.

If I'm dealing with two computers, each of which has an associated mouse, the latter, taken collectively are computer mice.

Alan Moore