There was a time in my youth that I truly believed Iran would soon be sending astronauts to the moon. This wishful thinking was not without reason: Here and there, one would see the replica of a moushak (missile/rocket) at a roadside - a cylindrical form made of tin with a cone-like tip, erected on a rusted tripod. The contraption often bore an advertisement like for the Shahpasand vegetable oil. As I recall, there was also talk of celestial pursuits coming from the higher-ups in the government. Given the recent fireworks over Middle Eastern skies I thought I look into the etymology of the Persian term moushak.

In Persian, the term moush means “rat.” A moushak (moush + diminutive suffix ~ak) is what one would call a "mouse." However, in the vernacular one speaks of a moush-e kouchoulou (little mouse) when one wants to refer to a mouse. To be clear, the word moush is a Persian word derived from the Sanskrit mushakah, with its cousins surviving in other tongues like in the form of the German maus, Russian myshi, Sewedish mus, Latin mus, Gergian mausi, Uyghur ma'us and so on.

It would be rather ridiculous to posit that the word moushak (missile/rocket) be derived from moush (rat). The two have nothing in common, functionally or size-was. But, believe it or not,  moushak (missile) and moush (rat) are related. Here is how: According to Loqatnameh Dehkhoda “Moushak is a kind of firework made of paper in the form of a mouse, with a conic tip and a tail-like stick with a wick, which is lit and set off  from the ground.” 

There is also the term fesh-fesheh that is a synonym for moushak (in the sense of firework/rocket), ostensibly named as such because of the fesh or fish sound that it makes when it is set off. But one uses the tern fesh-fesheh in relation to the celebratory fireworks, not of the kind that are lighting up the skies over the Middle East these days.