street urchin
5
7.6
- noun
- /strit ˈɜrʧɪn/
- Archaic
:
mendigo
- The community organized a fundraiser to help the local street urchins who were living in the area.
- street urchins continue to beg
- street urchins struggling to survive
- poor street urchins
Examples
-
What, were you a homeless street urchin?
-
Maybe we looked like street urchins down on our luck?
Blog text (21) -
Little street urchins.
-
In school, teachers called him Liu Damin, which was his real name but too formal for us street urchins.
Fiction book (1995) -
He looked like an Italian street urchin; he was losing his teeth, was small and handsome with flashing eyes.
Fiction book (1997) -
Like a starving street urchin he yearns to pluck peaches from the trees that grow in my grove.
-
Instead, the Society concentrated on rescuing children from the Protestant societies which "sought to gather street urchins... not only from their sordid surroundings but from their religion."
Academic text (1992) -
In the 1960s, ubiquitous street urchins in Brazil were referred to with a blend of annoyance and affection as moleques, meaning ragamuffins, scamps, or rascals.
Academic text (1997) -
During the winter, many street urchins struggle to find warm clothes and food to survive.
-
A kind stranger offered food and shelter to a street urchin she found sleeping on a park bench.
Synonyms
14
7.8
A poor child who lives on the street and often causes trouble
3
4.4
A child who lives or works on the streets without adult care
2
9.9
A child who spends most of their time living on the streets in poor areas
How Scruffy
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun is a straightforward combination of 'street' (location) + 'urchin' (mischievous or poor child), so the sense 'a child who lives or spends time on the streets' is directly inferable from the parts. This adjectival modifier + noun composition is common across languages, making the expression immediately comprehensible to learners who know both constituents.
Etymology
Street urchin comes from an older use of urchin to mean a small, prickly animal called a 'hedgehog', and people later used urchin for a scruffy 'child'. So street urchin came to mean a poor 'child' who lives or spends most of their time on the street.