urchin
/ˈɝt͡ʃɪn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.79 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A mischievous child.
noun
A street urchin, a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets.
noun
A sea urchin.
noun
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.
noun
A neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs.
Example Sentences
- "We'll dress [them] like urchins, ouphes, and fairies."
- "In old wives tales that in old time did live, To whose odde tales much credit men did give, Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares, Urchins, and elves, to many a house repaires."
- "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."
- "And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes / Forever on watch ran off each with a prize."
- "Here we have a carding-engine, with the drum surmounted with urchin or squirrel cards[…]"
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: yrchoun, heriçun, *ericio, ērīcius
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɝt͡ʃɪn/
- British English: /ˈɜːtʃɪn/