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Urchin
//ˈɜːtʃɪn// noun
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A mischievous child.
"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 poor and often mischievous city child wordnet
- 3 A street urchin, a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets.
"And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes / Forever on watch ran off each with a prize."
- 4 A sea urchin.
- 5 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.
"Here we have a carding-engine, with the drum surmounted with urchin or squirrel cards[…]"
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- 6 A neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs. historical
- 7 A hedgehog. obsolete
- 8 A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form of a hedgehog. obsolete
"We'll dress [them] like urchins, ouphes, and fairies."
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 also for "urchin"
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