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• street arab
  street arab

  noun

  a person, especially a child, who lives on the streets; urchin.
• street Arab
  street Arab

  noun

  a homeless child, esp one who survives by begging and stealing; urchin

street arab

American  

[street ar-uhb] / ˈstrit ˌær əb /

Or street Arab

noun

Archaic: Often Offensive.

1. a person, especially a child, who lives on the streets; urchin.

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street Arab British  

noun

1. literary a homeless child, esp one who survives by begging and stealing; urchin

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Sensitive Note

See Arab.

Etymology

Origin of street arab

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

In his native town," Author U Nu wrote of himself in the third person, "the nickname of Tate Sanetha, Saturday-born street Arab, was well known to everybody .

From Time Magazine Archive

We had fallen in somewhere with a poor little waif of a boy, one easily to be recognized by the practiced eye of to-day as a good specimen of the street Arab.

From Authors and Friends by Fields, Annie

There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgelling.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) Juvenilia and Other Papers by Stevenson, Robert Louis

Butler, having transferred his faith to the Bank of England, diverted himself like a street Arab with a slingshot by peppering the church windows.

From Modern Essays by Ayres, Harry Morgan

The motto for the Professor's book should have been the emphatic exclamation of the street Arab, "My heye! such games!"

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, January 10, 1891 by Various