urchin
pronunciation
How to pronounce urchin in British English:
UK [ˈɜ:tʃɪn]
How to pronounce urchin in American English:
US [ˈɜrtʃɪn]
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- Noun:
- poor and often mischievous city child
Word Origin
- urchin
- urchin: [13] Urchin originally meant ‘hedgehog’. It was borrowed from Old Northern French herichon, which came via Vulgar Latin *hēriciō from Latin hērīcius or ērīcius ‘hedgehog’, a derivative of ēr ‘hedgehog’. This ancestral sense now survives only dialectally, but its spiny connotations are preserved in sea urchin, which dates from the late 16th century. The metaphorical ‘dirty scruffy child, brat’ emerged in the 16th century too. The second syllable of caprice goes back to Latin ērīcius.=> caprice
- urchin (n.)
- c. 1300, yrichon "hedgehog," from Old North French *irechon (cognates: Picard irechon, Walloon ireson, Hainaut hirchon), from Old French herichun "hedgehog" (Modern French hérisson), formed with diminutive suffix -on + Vulgar Latin *hericionem, from Latin ericius "hedgehog," enlarged form of er, originally *her, from PIE root *ghers- "to bristle" (cognates: Greek kheros "hedgehog;" see horror). Still used for "hedgehog" in non-standard speech in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Shropshire. Applied throughout 16c. to people whose appearance or behavior suggested hedgehogs, from hunchbacks (1520s) to goblins (1580s) to bad girls (1530s); meaning "poorly or raggedly clothed youngster" emerged 1550s, but was not in frequent use until after c. 1780. Sea urchin is recorded from 1590s (a 19c. Newfoundland name for them was whore's eggs); Johnson describes it as "a kind of crabfish that has prickles instead of feet."
Example
- 1. To learn how urchin teeth stay sharp despite all that grinding , researchers analyzed the roughly 0.1-inch-long ( 3-millimeter-long ) choppers of the california purple sea urchin .
- 2. Still , somehow , the negro and the urchin held him in a greater terror .
- 3. It grows like a sea urchin : long spines of ability radiate out towards specific needs and desires .
- 4. Only three parts per million can kill sea urchin embryos , for example .
- 5. Adam was violent , and his cries and curses , his hard and brutal manner were the terror of the negro who passed at night that way , or the urchin overtaken by darkness on his road home .