Word.ws English Dictionary

street Arab

street Arab noun: a homeless child who roams the streets, usually begging for handouts; a street urchin.

Noun

street Arab (plural street Arabs)

  1. (dated) A homeless child who roams the streets, usually begging for handouts; a street urchin.
    • ‘It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force,’ said my companion, gravely; and as he spoke there rushed into the room half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on.1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, section VI

Forms of street Arab

pluralstreet Arabs
alternative formstreet-arab

Origin of street Arab

So-called because they were nomadic, with no fixed home.

Questions about street Arab

What does street Arab mean?
Street Arab means a homeless child who roams the streets, usually begging for handouts; a street urchin.
What part of speech is street Arab?
Street Arab is a noun.
What is the plural of street Arab?
The plural of street Arab is street Arabs.

Words near street Arab in the dictionary

  1. street ape
  2. street apes
  3. street appeal
  4. street apple
  5. street apples
  6. street Arab
  7. street Arabs
  8. street art
  9. street artist
  10. street artists
  11. street ball

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: street Arab (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.

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Cite this entry: “street Arab.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/street_arab. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.