Word.ws English Dictionary

street urchin

street urchin noun: a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets; sometimes a petty thief or pickpocket.

Noun

street urchin (plural street urchins)

  1. (UK, dated) A child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets; sometimes a petty thief or pickpocket.
    • She ran to the door and there beheld the ragged street urchin calmly playing his organ.1956 [1880], Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translation of original by Eileen Hall, page 84
    • On many occasions, groups of street urchins were seen climbing up large trees for squabs of Rose-ringed Parakeets[.]2020, Raju Kasambe, Indian Grey Hornbill: Unravelling the Secrets, page 94

street urchin meaning in Tagalog and Indonesian

street urchin in Tagalog

child living or spending most of their time in the streets
batang kalye

street urchin in Indonesian

child living or spending most of their time in the streets
anak jalanan

Synonyms of street urchin

Forms of street urchin

pluralstreet urchins

Origin of street urchin

First use appears c. 1827 in a publication by Thomas Carlyle.

Questions about street urchin

What does street urchin mean?
Street urchin means a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets; sometimes a petty thief or pickpocket.
What is street urchin in Tagalog?
Street urchin in Tagalog is batang kalye. See Street urchin meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is street urchin?
Street urchin is a noun.
What is the plural of street urchin?
The plural of street urchin is street urchins.

Words near street urchin in the dictionary

  1. street teams
  2. street theater
  3. street theaters
  4. street theatre
  5. street theatres
  6. street urchin
  7. street urchins
  8. street value
  9. street values
  10. street walker
  11. street walkers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: street urchin (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-street urchin.wav.

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