gamin
Syllables: ga·min/ˈɡæmɪn/
gamin noun: a homeless boy; a male street urchin; also (more generally), a cheeky, street-smart boy.
Noun
gamin (plural gamins)
- A homeless boy; a male street urchin; also (more generally), a cheeky, street-smart boy.
- Dearest Eloise,— There is one little and perhaps insignificant French cake, which I feel certain would soon become a favourite in the cottage, more particularly amongst its juvenile inhabitants. It is the famed galette, the melodramatic food of the gamins, galopins, mechanics, and semi-artists of...1854, Alexis [Benoît] Soyer, A Shilling Cookery for the People: Embracing an Entirely New System of Plain Cookery and Domestic Economy, London; New York, N.Y.: George Routledge & Co., →OCLC, page 125
- The Paris gamin is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has bad teeth, because he is poorly fed, and his stomach suffers and fine eyes because he has genius. [...] To sum up all once more, the gamin of Paris of the present day is, as the grœculus of Rome was in ancient times, the people as a...1862, Victor Hugo, “The Ancient Soul of Gaul” and “Ecce Paris, Ecce Homo”, in Cha[rle]s E[dwin] Wilbour, transl., Les Misérables. Marius. […], volume III, New York, N.Y.: [George W.] Carleton...
- Antonyms:
- gamine
gamin meaning in Malayalam and Kannada
gamin in Malayalam
- urchin, ragamuffin, waif
- തെണ്ടിച്ചെറുക്കൻ, തെരുവുപിള്ള, അനാഥക്കുട്ടി, ബാലഭിക്ഷു, ബാലയാചക, ബാലയാചകൻ
gamin in Kannada
- ಬೀದಿ ಹುಡುಗ, ತಿರುಕಳಿ, ತಲೆಹರಟೆ ಹುಡುಗ, ಅಲೆಮಾರಿ ಹುಡುಗ
Examples of gamin in a sentence
- It is the famed galette, the melodramatic food of the gamins, galopins, mechanics, and semi-artists of France.1854, Alexis [Benoît] Soyer, A Shilling Cookery for the People: Embracing an Entirely New System of Plain Cookery and Domestic Economy...
- The Paris gamin is respectful, ironical, and insolent.1862, Victor Hugo, “The Ancient Soul of Gaul” and “Ecce Paris, Ecce Homo”, in Cha[rle]s E[dwin] Wilbour, transl., Les Misérables. Marius....
- All the lonelier for two wretched gamins, counting their dirty sous, and draggled newspapers.1894, [Robert William Chambers], chapter XVII, in In the Quarter, New York, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill.: F. Tennyson Neely, publisher, →OCLC, page...
- Naked yellow gamins begin to dance. [...] Down the square the procession goes, followed by the music, turns a corner, and is lost.1923, Evelyn Scott, “Part IV”, in Escapade, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, →OCLC, page 135:
Antonyms of gamin
Forms of gamin
| plural | gamins |
|---|
Origin of gamin
Borrowed from French gamin (“a street urchin; a young boy”), apparently an “eastern dialect” word of unknown origin.
Words formed from gamin
Words that rhyme with gamin
Questions about gamin
- What does gamin mean?
- Gamin means a homeless boy; a male street urchin; also (more generally), a cheeky, street-smart boy.
- What is gamin in Malayalam?
- Gamin in Malayalam is തെണ്ടിച്ചെറുക്കൻ, തെരുവുപിള്ള, അനാഥക്കുട്ടി. See Gamin meaning in Malayalam.
- How do you use gamin in a sentence?
- It is the famed galette, the melodramatic food of the gamins, galopins, mechanics, and semi-artists of France.
- What part of speech is gamin?
- Gamin is a noun.
- How do you pronounce gamin?
- Gamin is pronounced /ˈɡæmɪn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of gamin?
- The plural of gamin is gamins.
Words near gamin in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gamin (page history and authors); gamin (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); gamin (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-gamin.oga.
Cite this entry: “gamin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gamin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.