What does “мышка-норушка” mean in the Russian tale Teremok?

Бабушка Дима рассказывает сказку Теремок

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A1 Russian listening practice · Standard Russian · Curated for beginners

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мышка-норушка (myshka-norushka)
Russian fairy-tale nickname
“little burrow mouse,” a rhyming fairy-tale name

In the folk tale Теремок (“The Little Wooden House”) each animal has a rhyming double name. Мышка-норушка is the mouse who lives in a burrow (нора), лягушка-квакушка is the croaking frog (квакать, “to croak”), and зайчик-побегайчик is the running bunny. Every Russian child knows these names; they are as fixed as “Little Red Riding Hood.”

The rest of the cast follows the pattern: лисичка-сестричка (fox-little-sister) and волчок-серый бочок (little wolf, grey flank), until the bear arrives and squashes the house. The tale opens with the famous line стоит в поле теремок, and the clip’s narrator adds из трубы идёт дымок, “smoke rises from the chimney.”

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this A1 Russian listening practice listening practice?

82.9%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Russian words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday Russian.

General Russian frequency

74.4%
Top 1,000
82.9%
Top 2,000
88%
Top 5,000

Spoken Russian frequency

90.8%
Top 1,000
96.9%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A1 level.

дымок
4×
Rare / outside top 5,000
smoke detector
квакушка
4×
Rare / outside top 5,000
frog
теремок
4×
Rare / outside top 5,000
little tower
мышка
3×
Rare / outside top 5,000
mouse
не низок и высок
1×
figurative: not very high or tall

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

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