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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

See Examples For:

street arab street Arab

"Blest if I know," replied Tawsey, staring; "they're mad, I think," and he related the incoming of the Indian and the street arab.

From The Opal Serpent by Hume, Fergus

Commonly, he would have been through with all his tasks for the day, and he looked with something like disgust at this dirty street arab who was thus turning the household “all tipsy-topsy.”

From Divided Skates by Raymond, Evelyn

His figure interested her—the figure of a boy, almost a street arab.

From Women in Love by Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)

Neatly dressed, clean and natty, surrounded by his quondam playmates, he is “the observed of all observers,” and is gazed at with admiring respect by the street arab from a respectful distance.

From The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1 by Whymper, Frederick

They were popular, with a vengeance—for every little street arab had beef bones for castanets, and every new song was roared out in the streets until it nauseated. 

From Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign by Ashton, John

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

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

A God has always passed over the street Arab.

From Les Misérables by Hapgood, Isabel Florence

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

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