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When young, Jeff would challenge himself to define a word, chasing it down through the dictionary: Fishwife to shrew to shrewmouse to insectivorous to vorous.

Among others was an extremely thin little shrewmouse, dainty and devilish, with steely eyes and thin pinched lips turning inward.

He was a water-shrewmouse, 3 and very much like the common shrewmouse that we often find lying dead in lanes and pathways.

I saw the sturdy Dudgeon’s mouth working like a bull-terrier’s over a shrewmouse.

The ichneumon and the shrewmouse were also held sacred, though not identified with a human god.