urchin

American  

[ur-chin] / ˈɜr tʃɪn /

noun

• urchins
  plural

1. a mischievous boy.

   Synonyms:

   scamp, rascal

2. any small boy or youngster.

3. sea urchin.

4. either of two small rollers covered with card clothing used in conjunction with the cylinder in carding.

5. Chiefly British Dialect. a hedgehog.

6. Obsolete. an elf or mischievous sprite.

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urchin British  

/ ˈɜːtʃɪn /

noun

1. a mischievous roguish child, esp one who is young, small, or raggedly dressed

2. See sea urchin heart urchin

3. an archaic or dialect name for a hedgehog

4. either of the two cylinders in a carding machine that are covered with carding cloth

5. obsolete an elf or sprite

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• urchins
  plural

Etymology

Origin of urchin

1300–50; Middle English urchun, urchon hedgehog < Old North French ( h ) erichon, Old French heriçun < Vulgar Latin *hēriciōn- (stem of *hēriciō ), equivalent to Latin ēric ( ius ) hedgehog + -iōn- -ion

Explanation

That young child dressed in dirty hand-me-downs and running rampant through city streets is an urchin. Street urchins, as they are commonly called, have a reputation for getting into trouble. Strangely enough, urchin, pronounced "UR-chin," comes from the 13th century French word yrichon, which means “hedgehog,” and is still used as such in parts of England today. As for people who are urchins, perhaps they got the name because at the time, they were so small, wild and many in number — like hedgehogs. The 19th century novelist Charles Dickens wrote about so many fictional urchins, most famously Oliver Twist, that dickens has become a synonym for urchin.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

urchin urchins

Some of the urchin phenomenon can be traced to social media, of course, and the way it can turn a product into a viral craze via TikTok, Instagram and the like.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

Usually nothing lives inside a blue hole, but cameras dropped inside the new discovery show small sponges, a species of urchin called large spatangoid, and diverse fish species.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2026

Ora King salmon crudo was dressed in passionfruit aguachile with Tabasco oil, while a uni carbonara used creamy sea urchin in place of guanciale, finished with smoked trout roe.

From Salon ● Feb. 2, 2026

When sea urchin populations grow too large, however, especially if their natural predators are heavily hunted or overfished, the balance can flip.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 12, 2025

“But how can a pore urchin dump un on ter noase? When ee ha’nt got nothing to dump with, nor way to hold ’un?

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

Joey Jeffers, who co-owns the Thousand Islands Bait Store in Alexandria Bay, N.Y., told me he recently landed walleye on urchins.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

The free, donation-based marine educational center is home to swell sharks, sea urchins, jellyfish and more that will leave visitors of any age in awe.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 6, 2026

"In the supermarket, you find luxury products, sea urchins or Dom Perignon champagne, and vegetables have become extremely expensive," pushing some people to do their shopping in a neighbouring town.

From Barron's ● Mar. 20, 2026

Crinoids are part of the phylum Echinodermata which also boasts sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

From BBC ● Feb. 19, 2026

There were some fuzzy data using sea urchins, interpreted as a transformation of DNA into RNA, but I preferred to trust other experiments showing that DNA molecules, once synthesized, are very very stable.

From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson