The word 耗子 (hàozi) for "mouse" or "rat" is formed through a vivid folk etymology where the character 耗, meaning "to consume" or "to waste", directly references the rodent's destructive habit of depleting grain stores. The suffix 子 is added, a common practice in Chinese for forming familiar, often colloquial nouns, which here gives the creature a slightly personified, everyday name. Thus, the term essentially labels the animal as "the little consumer" or "the pest that devours", a pragmatic and descriptive name born from agricultural life.