urchin

Noun

urchin (plural urchins)

1. (archaic, dialectal) A hedgehog.
2. (obsolete) A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form of a hedgehog.
   • We'll dress [them] like urchins, ouphes, and fairies.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
   • In old wives tales that in old time did live,
     To whose odde tales much credit men did give,
     Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares,
     Urchins, and elves, to many a house repaires.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 280
3. 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.1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 7, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC
4. 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.a. 1879, William Howitt, The Wind in a Frolic
5. A sea urchin.
6. 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[…]1836, Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain […]
7. (historical) A neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs.