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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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Sensitivity

See Arab.

Etymology

Origin of street arab

First recorded in 1860–65

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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 Fergus Hume

She had a great deal of natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry.

From George Sand, some aspects of her life and writings by Alys Hallard

In the tapu grove he found one fellow stealing breadfruit, cheerful and impudent as a street arab; and it was only on a menace of exposure that he showed himself the least discountenanced.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson

He learned his letters with all the sharp precocity which marks the Parisian street arab, and derived great amusement from the woodcuts illustrating the alphabet.

From The Fat and the Thin by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

She gave him half a sovereign, and he wished he had been a street arab to whom she could have said, "And keep the change."

From The Gay Adventure A Romance by Richard Bird

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

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 Harry Morgan Ayres

Nellie Farren's great song was one about a street Arab with the words: "Let me hold your, nag, sir, carry your little bag, sir, anything you please to give—thank'ee, sir!"

From Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis by Charles Belmont Davis

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

Gamin, gam′in, n. a street Arab, a precocious and mischievous imp of the pavement.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 2 of 4: E-M) by Various

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