urchin

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word urchin. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word urchin, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say urchin in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word urchin you have here. The definition of the word urchin will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofurchin, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English yrchoun, irchoun (“hedgehog; sea urchin”), from Old Northern French irechon, from Vulgar Latin *ērīciōnem, from Latin ericius. Compare modern French hérisson, whence the English doublet herisson.

Pronunciation

Noun

urchin (plural urchins)

  1. A mischievous child.
    • 1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 7, in Riders of the Purple Sage , New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC:
      And like these fresh green things were the dozens of babies, tots, toddlers, noisy urchins, laughing girls, a whole multitude of children of one family. For Collier Brandt, the father of all this numerous progeny, was a Mormon with four wives.
  2. A street urchin, a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets.
    • a. 1879, William Howitt, The Wind in a Frolic:
      And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes / Forever on watch ran off each with a prize.
  3. A sea urchin.
  4. One of a pair in a series of small card cylinders arranged around a carding drum; so called from its fancied resemblance to the hedgehog.
    • 1836, Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain :
      Here we have a carding-engine, with the drum surmounted with urchin or squirrel cards […]
  5. (historical) A neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs.
  6. (obsolete) A hedgehog.
  7. (obsolete) A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form of a hedgehog.

Derived terms

Translations

street urchin — see street urchin
sea urchin — see sea urchin

Anagrams

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia