Noun: urchin
| Singular | urchin |
| Plural | urchins |
Sample Sentences
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We'll dress [them] like urchins, ouphes, and fairies. [c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv]:]
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In old wives tales that in old time did live,
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To whose odde tales much credit men did give,
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Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares,
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Urchins, and elves, to many a house repaires. [1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 280:]
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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. [1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 7, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC:]
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And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes / Forever on watch ran off each with a prize. [a. 1879, William Howitt, The Wind in a Frolic:]
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Here we have a carding-engine, with the drum surmounted with urchin or squirrel cards[…] [1836, Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain […] :]
Nouns inflected like urchin
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English yrchoun, irchoun (“hedgehog; sea urchin”), from Old Northern French irechon, from Vulgar Latin *ērīciōnem, from Latin ērīcius. Compare modern French hérisson, whence the English doublet herisson. See: Middle English Nouns '
yrchoun', Latin Nouns '
ērīcius', French Nouns '
hérisson'.
Verbs referencing "urchin"
Spanish Nouns
erizo.