guttersnipe
Americannoun
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a person belonging to or characteristic of the lowest social group in a city.
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a street urchin.
noun
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a child who spends most of his time in the streets, esp in a slum area
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a person regarded as having the behaviour, morals, etc, of one brought up in squalor
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of guttersnipe
Explanation
If someone refers to you as a guttersnipe, it's definitely not a compliment — they're essentially calling you a messy and ill-behaved child. While it's unusual to hear guttersnipe these days, it was once a common way to refer to a homeless person, particularly a child. The word made an initial appearance in the 1850s meaning "street corner broker" in Wall Street slang, but thanks to Mark Twain's 1869 reference to "noble savages (and) illustrious guttersnipes," it came to mean "street urchin." Earlier, as far back as Shakespeare's time snipe had been used to mean "disreputable person."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
By this juncture, the only thing we know for sure is that Ferrara, bless his guttersnipe soul, is still bracingly, adamantly himself.
From New York Times ● Nov. 18, 2021
“What are we going to do,” the queen despaired, “about my sister’s guttersnipe life?”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 11, 2021
A full throttle paean to New York, this prologue levitates on the velocity of its nameless narrator’s guttersnipe lyricism.
From Slate ● Apr. 1, 2020
Parliament's website lists examples of words that might be considered offensive, including "stoolpigeon", "blackguard", "coward", "git", "guttersnipe", "hooligan" and "rat".
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2019
By overcoming this guttersnipe he might have the whole place at his mercy—but that was not what he wanted.
From The Mardi Gras Mystery by Bedford-Jones, H. (Henry)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
