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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

The stranger was a long-barreled, rumple-furred, devil-clawed street arab, of a caste—or no-caste—that battles for existence with the world—and beats it.

From A Night Out by Edward Henry Peple

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

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

The beggar reciting the Bible to fill his pocket is very well; but he does not come up to the preaching street arab.

From Friend Mac Donald by Max O'Rell

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 John Ashton

Andre had had some little experience of this delightful class of street arab, of which Toto Chupin was so favorable a specimen, and knew their habits, customs, and language.

From The Champdoce Mystery by Émile Gaboriau

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

"He's in all right, Mr. Holmes," cried a small street Arab, running up to us.

From The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"It will at all events be good enough to get killed in," said a little street Arab who was rolling numerous flag-stones to the barricade.

From The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

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 Robert Louis Stevenson

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 Annie Fields