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Urchin   Listen
noun
Urchin  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A hedgehog.
2.
(Zool.) A sea urchin. See Sea urchin.
3.
A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form a hedgehog. "We 'll dress (them) like urchins, ouphes, and fairies."
4.
A pert or roguish child; now commonly used only of a boy. "And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes Forever on watch ran off each with a prize." "You did indeed dissemble, you urchin you; but where's the girl that won't dissemble for an husband?"
5.
One of a pair in a series of small card cylinders, arranged around a carding drum; so called from its fancied resemblance to the hedgehog.
Urchin fish (Zool.), a diodon.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Urchin" Quotes from Famous Books



... fun isn't all over yet; you can ride too." Tossing the urchin up, Jack set him behind Link. "Hold on ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap. Phoebe Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue. He gave them each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris. But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... liberty. Besides he wrote private letters to Mr. Osbalderston, and called Laud "the little great man," for this he, in 1639, was fined L5,000 to the King, and L3,000 to the Archbishop. Osbalderston in his letters had spoken of the "great Leviathan" and the "little Urchin," and was fined L5,000, to the King, and the same to the Archbishop, and sentenced also to stand in the pillory with ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... a small boy long to slip into a new suit of clothes. And when a ragged urchin disappeared behind the head of the great old "four-poster" to-day, it seemed scarcely a minute before a trig, "tailor-made boy" strutted out from the opposite side, ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother, out of pure indulgence, took me up, and put me toward the child, who presently seized me by the middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle, which was a kind of hollow vessel filled ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... what ye do, dar," shouted the biggest boy, a woolly-heady urchin, with nothing on but a big pair of trousers that came up under his arms and were fastened over his shoulders by two bits of string, "jist you come on dis side and jump ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, And scanty, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a little room divided from the main garret by wooden bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged heaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate expression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... and urchin-spouted boar, 1105 Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave, Ne'er saw the beauteous livery that he wore; Witness the entertainment that he gave: 1108 If he did see his face, why then I know He thought to kiss him, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... seeing the youngster's future assured, because this man so lavish in violence was equally so in generosity. In time there would be a bit of land and a good flock of sheep for the urchin. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... sleep The urchin's eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn. Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... what aileth the boy?) Sith we have but one, 'tis not difficult to answer—his most sacred Majesty King Edward the Sixth—whom God preserve! Yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin is he, too; and whether he be mad or no—and they say he mendeth daily —his praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him, likewise, and offer prayers that he may be spared to reign long in England; for he began ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the sitting-room. Brun was sitting on the sofa with Boy Comfort on his knee. "He's a regular little urchin!" he said. "But he's not at all like his mother. He's got your ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... to be repaired. They were brought home when he was absent, and left below with the porter, who gave them to him on his return. The following morning the tailleur called while Colton was still in bed, for the cash; he was shown into the bedroom by the miserable little urchin who attended daily to light the fire, &c., and demanded in payment twenty sous; this was resisted on the part of Colton as exorbitant, and the tailleur, vexed at having parted with his work before payment, seized a pair that were at the bedside, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... got the better even of his fear of her; and when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent person, and rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch him, for the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud of being able to out-strip her, notwithstanding his lameness, would run round the room, laughing like a little Puck, and mocking at all her menaces. In a few anecdotes of his early life which he related in his "Memoranda," though the name of his mother was never mentioned ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... the swimming. A little urchin would hang to his pony's long tail, while the latter, with only his head above water, glided sportively along. Finally the animals were driven into a fine field of grass and we turned our attention to ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... catch, but there was a boy trying to catch them. He was on the opposite bank; had crawled down it, only other boys can tell how, a barefooted urchin of ten or twelve, with an enormous bagful of worms hanging from his jacket button. To put a new worm on the hook without coming to destruction, he first twisted his legs about a young birch, and put his ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... been rigged a two-armed semaphore, which, one of the clerks told me, was used to signal the sight of ships coming in the Golden Gate. The arms were variously arranged according to the rig or kind of vessel. Every man, every urchin, every Chinaman, even, knew the meaning of these various signals. A year later, I was attending a theatrical performance in the Jenny Lind Theatre on the Plaza. In the course of the play an actor rushed on frantically holding his arms ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... and I therefore determined to show my employer that nothing was beyond the capacity of his Greek cook. Eh bien, mon maitre, all was going on remarkably well, and I felt almost reconciled to my new situation when who should rush into the kitchen but le fils de la maison, my young master, an ugly urchin of thirteen years, or thereabouts. He bore in his hand a manchet of bread, which, after prying about for a moment, he proceeded to dip in the pan where some delicate woodcocks were in the course of preparation. You know, mon maitre, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... them, without furnishing him with a clue through the method employed for their transmission that would avail him anything, or supply him with any means of reaching her. It had been thrust into his hand by a street urchin, as he had entered the door of Bristol Bob's that half an hour before. He had not even questioned the urchin—it would have been useless, futile, barren of results. A hundred previous experiences had at least taught him that! He could surmise about ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... A laughing boy but yesterday, A merry urchin blithe and gay, Whose joyous shout came ringing out ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... An urchin, chasing a ball, plunged recklessly beneath the auto, emerging with the sphere in his grimy fist. West stopped ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... by me, I placed my hand mechanically upon the neck of one of them, and following the slow pace of the animals I re-entered Rimini without the slightest notice being taken of me, even by the drivers of the mules. I gave some money to the first street urchin I met, and he took ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... one in de hurry-up wagon!" exclaimed another urchin. "A feller in a white suit—dem's doctors. I know, cause me fadder was ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... bark cut and detached. He then prepared it for launching by puddling up its ends, and putting it into the water, placed his lubra and an infant child in it, and giving her a rude spear as a paddle pushed her away from the bank. She was immediately followed by a little urchin who was sitting on the bank, the canoe being too fragile to receive him; but he evidently doubted his ability to gain the opposite bank of the river, and it was most interesting to mark the anxiety of both parents as the little ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... train at a sleepy country station next day I was promptly waylaid by a black-eyed urchin who informed me that Mrs. Ashley had sent him with an express wagon for my luggage, and that "Miss Gussie" was waiting with the carriage at the store, pointing down to a small building before whose door a girl was trying to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the house with bad news in some form or other. Some rock or snowball he had cast with the most innocent of intentions had gone through a window or a milk wagon or somebody's silk hat. Or he had pulled a small girl's hair, or taken the skates away from a helpless urchin. He had bad luck too in picking victims ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes

... with stones. To the child-mind a stone is a marvelous thing, and ought so to be, since even to the understanding of the mathematician there can be nothing more wonderful than a common stone. The tiny urchin suspects the stone to be much more than it seems, which is an excellent suspicion; and if stupid grown-up folk did not untruthfully tell him that his plaything is not worth thinking about, he would never tire of it, and would ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... for that snub-nosed, freckled-faced urchin with the ragged pants, as he seems to be displaying a fine amount of shins at present," ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... Tallyho, as he detected an urchin thief in the act of picking his pocket of his handkerchief. This hopeful imp, though young in years, was experienced in iniquity, had served an active apprenticeship to the art ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Worth drove it at her like a turbulent urchin. "I'm having the time of my young life with this thing, and I want to take you in ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... at the same moment his glance met that of Dingwell. The gray eyes of the big fellow narrowed and grew chill. Fox, starting to move away, recognized the cattleman from whom he had escaped half an hour before. Taken by surprise, the little spy looked guilty as an urchin ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... when the truant gull Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing Dispetals roses; here the house is framed Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine, Such clay as artists fashion and such wood As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there Eternal granite hewn from the living isle And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower That from its wet foundation to its crown Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cried the urchin, with a grimace to attract the attention of the crowd. They looked in the direction indicated, and then in' chorus began to shout. Old Robin turned and glanced indifferently down the road. The next instant he wheeled and his black hand made a clutch ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... only Louise, who had become a good musician, had made the piano submit to long tortures, but her sister Maria, and Amedee also, already played the 'Bouquet de Bal' or 'Papa, les p'tits bateaux'. Rosine, too, in her character of street urchin, knew all the popular songs, and spent entire hours in picking out the airs with one finger upon ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... a sea urchin." Edna had rolled her sleeves to the shoulder and was plunging her arm into the water. She brought out a ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... parallel to the one-thousand-foot wall of Horn Bluff meeting several boulders stranded on the ice, as well as the fragile shell of a tiny sea-urchin. The promontory was domed with snow and ice, more than one thousand two hundred feet above sea-level. From it streamed a blue glacier overflowing through a rift in the face. Five miles on our way, the sledge passed from frictionless ice to rippled snow and with a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... more heat in her ashes than in your fire, Kate Clive! Ah! here comes her messenger," continued he, as an ancient man appeared with a letter in his hand. This letter Mrs. Woffington snatched and read, and at the same instant in bounced the call-boy. "Epilogue called," said this urchin, in the tone of command which these small fry of Parnassus adopt; and, obedient to his high behest, Mrs. Woffington moved to the door, with the Bracegirdle missive in her hand, but not before she had delivered its general contents: "The great actress ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... occasion, Speke having given Mtesa a rifle, the king, after examining the weapon, loaded it and told a page to go out and shoot some one, to ascertain if it would kill well. In a moment a report was heard, and the urchin came back grinning with delight at his achievement, just like a schoolboy who has shot his first sparrow. Nothing was heard about the unfortunate wretch who had served as a target, the murder of a man being by far too common an incident to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... worst. About five an urchin came along, looked at mo, grinned, and tried to put something in my box. Clumsy little beast, he trod on my foot. I sprang forward with a growl, and his offering, whatever it was, rolled on the pavement. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... wholesome dam Of the young bull, until the milkmaid finds The nipple, next day, sore, and udder dry. Call not thy brothers brethren! Call me not Mother; for if I brought thee forth, it was As foolish hens at times hatch vipers, by Sitting upon strange eggs. Out, urchin, out! [Exit BERTHA. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... such that it contains the starfish potentially. The relation of its parts and the forces therein are such that, when placed under proper conditions, it develops into a starfish. Another egg placed under identical conditions will develop into a sea urchin, and another into an oyster. If these three eggs have the power of developing into three different animals under identical conditions, it is evident that they must have corresponding differences in spite of the fact that each is a single cell. Each must in ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... small coins, with which the urchin was gladdened, and shuffled after his sister. Margaret and Gerard were speedily joined by Martin, and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... pure indulgence, held me up to the child, who seized me by the middle and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud, the urchin was frightened, and let me drop, and I should have infallibly broke my neck, if the mother had not held her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... city boy, but the closest he had ever seen an airship was a distance away and five hundred feet up in the air. Now, with big wonder eyes he stared at the strange appearing machine. His fingers moved restlessly, like a street-urchin surveying an automobile and ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood

... store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... will be left Eternally Inexcusable." "Use IV. We should hence Learn to make a Spiritual Improvement of the Snow." And then with a closing volley of every text winch figures under the head of "Snow" in the Concordance, the discourse comes to an end; and every liberated urchin goes home with his head full of devout fancies of building a snow-fort, after sunset, from which to propel consecrated missiles against imaginary or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... prone to forget. Whether he had run away, or his father had turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve, he was thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, on a wayside in New Jersey; took a fancy to the urchin; carried him on with him in his wandering life; taught him all he knew himself—to take tin-types (as well as I can make out) and doubt the Scriptures; and died at last in Ohio at the corner of a road. "He was a grand specimen," cried ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... gentle sleep The urchin eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, With ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... a pensive urchin, with my hands behind my back and my face turned to the sun. The dazzling splendor fascinates me. I am the Moth attracted by the light of the lamp. With what am I enjoying the glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... was only after his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time he visited our village. To ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... I." Hippopopotamus comforts his heart Biting half-moons out of strawberry tart. Epitaph on George Francis Train. (Inscribed on a Pork-barrel.) Beneath this casket rots unknown A Thing that merits not a stone, Save that by passing urchin cast; Whose fame and virtues we express By transient urn of emptiness, With apt inscription (to its past Relating-and to his): "Prime Mess." No honour had this infidel, That doth not appertain, as well, To altered caitiff on the drop; No wit that would ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... As the urchin was too dirty and ragged to eat in the hotel, he was given a quarter of a dollar for his dinner and told to come back in half an hour. This he did willingly, and a little later Mr. Porter, Dave, and the ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... mother combined with it," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "When Bob was a little urchin, he once, in anticipation of his future tastes, committed the enormity of riding on a stick on Sunday; so she locked him up till he had learnt six verses of one of Watts's hymns about going to church being like a little ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... they passed audible comments upon it among themselves. "How far can you see through the spyglass?" a bolder spirit would now and then venture to ask; and once, on the railway track out in the pine lands, a barefooted, happy-faced urchin made a guess that was really admirable for its ingenuity. "Looks like you're goin' over inspectin' the wire," he remarked. On rare occasions, as an act of special grace, I offered such an inquirer a peep through the magic lenses,—an experiment that never ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... was an exceedingly fat woman, a native of Valladolid, in Old Castile. "Have you any other family," I demanded, "besides these daughters?" "Two sons," she replied; "one of them an officer in the army, father of this urchin," pointing to a wicked but clever looking boy of about twelve, who at that moment bounded into the room; "the other is the most celebrated national in Madrid: he is a tailor by trade, and his name is Baltasar. He has much influence with the other nationals, on account of the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... to the front of the peninsula, I looked for "sea-urchin," but none fell in my way. I had often wished to get a good specimen of this curious shell, but without success. Some of them turned up now and then upon the beach near our village, but they were not allowed to lie long. As they made ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... than usual in leaving her patients that night; and her purpose had been to go home by the nearest way, and not pass through the Square. The villagers had feared this, and had forestalled her; at the turning where she would have left the main road, she found waiting for her the swiftest-footed urchin in all St. Mary's, little Pierre Michaud. The readiest witted, too, and of the freest tongue, and he was charged to bring Aunt Hibba by the way of the Square, but by no means to ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... from the cliffs with a load of implements, shouldering rake and spade, and dangling tiny buckets from their arms. One little group makes straight for its sand-hole of yesterday, and is soon busy with huge heaps and mounds which are to take the form of a castle. A crowing little urchin beside is already waving the Union Jack which is ready to crown the edifice, if the Fates ever suffer it to be crowned. Engineers of less military taste are busy near the water's edge with an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals, and greeting with shouts of triumph the admission ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... delight. Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the bobolink was the envy of my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed to be mewed up, during the live-long ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... whole and indignant surprise that the errand-boys under discussion do not read 'The Egoist' and 'The Master Builder.' It is the custom, particularly among magistrates, to attribute half the crimes of the Metropolis to cheap novelettes. If some grimy urchin runs away with an apple, the magistrate shrewdly points out that the child's knowledge that apples appease hunger is traceable to some curious literary researches. The boys themselves, when penitent, frequently accuse the novelettes with great bitterness, which is only to be expected ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... good things must come to an end, and so did this party. One by one the little guests said good-bye, and after they had gone the little family of children and elders was left alone. Though it was past eleven, the little urchin Charlie insisted on clambering on to Mr Drift's knee, to hear one last story, and the little girls besieged their uncles, and put their arms round their necks, and besought their intercession with mamma to gain them another half-hour's respite ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... on the first landing. In an instant he had unlocked the door, entered, and locked it again behind him. From outside, an excited street urchin's voice shrilled ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... as she rushed into the chamber, leading in Uctred. He had been discovered on removing some of the huge piles of timber again from the hill, where, under a curiously-supported covering of beams and other rude materials, he lay, seemingly asleep. The urchin looked as malicious and froward as ever, even ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... (cinnabar-flowered); Bot. Mag. 4326.—This is another of the Mamillaria-like kinds, and is remarkable for the depressed form of its stem, which may be likened to a sea urchin, both in size and shape. Old plants are from 6 in. to 8 in. in diameter, and about 4 in. high; the spiral formed by the tubercles rises very gradually, and each of the latter is surmounted by a tuft of strong, brown, radiating spines, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... urchin came sauntering along, and very leisurely seated himself upon a bank near the devoted angler. Curiosity is natural to youth, thought Foozle—how I shall make the lad wonder when I ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... always keeping ahead with the guides, with whom he was apparently engaged in an interesting conversation. I was already beginning to feel somewhat tired, when a voice from the palanquin desired me to take out one of the children, as the little urchin had a fancy to be carried instead of being cooped up within it. Unwilling to disoblige the lady, I obeyed; so, placing the child on my shoulder, we again moved on—though, as I dragged my weary limbs along, I felt very much inclined to let the young urchin ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... Mr. Aston declared he was a changeling and not the thin little urchin he had first encountered by the mile-stone on the Great Road. They never alluded to his life before that, though they all knew of it, and made their own ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... hold of the horse with one hand, and with the other took his son out of the ear; then he put him down upon a straw, where he sat as merry as you please. The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside and said, "That little urchin will make our fortune if we can get him, and carry him about from town to town as a show; we must buy him." So they went to the woodman and asked him what he would take for the little man: "He will be better off," said they, "with us than with you." "I won't sell him at all," said the father, ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg

... feet long—nearly a third of the length of the Nancy Bell—the thresher could not have exceeded thirteen feet; and as for girth, the former was in proportion like a portly, Daniel-Lambert sort of man put by the side of a starving street urchin of seven. The only advantage the thresher apparently possessed was in its eyes, which, when one could get a glimpse of them, looked like those of a hawk; while the unwieldy cetacean had little tiny optics, not much bigger than those of a common haddock, which were placed ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... laden with a basket of provisions and various household necessities. Milk was brought to us daily from the above-mentioned cottage by a little toddler who seemed just able to carry the small tin bucket which held a lacteal pint. If the urchin had been the child of rich parents, as Euphemia sometimes observed, he would have been in his nurse's arms—but being poor, he was scarcely weaned before he began to carry ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... in some of the little neighboring stores, Nan saw a child pop out of a narrow alley beside the warehouse and look sharply up and down the street. It was the furtive, timid glance of the woods creature or the urchin of the streets; both expect and fear ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... when the dreamt-of fortune came would be more welcome if there were an heir to whom to leave it. What was the good of being rich, if the money went to collateral relatives? There was his nephew Savinien, a disagreeable urchin whom he looked on with indifference; and he was biased regarding his brother, who had all but failed several times in business, and to whose aid he had come to save the honor of the name. The mistress ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... passage," Paul continued—"so much so as to need elucidation. 'I have taken the child with me to get the picture from the jeweller, who has mended the ring, and the little urchin knew it ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... led C Company of the Leicestershires nightly to their picket-stations. On its first appearance a man ran to bayonet it, but the officer did not see the necessity of this, and stopped him. So the urchin lived, and ever after paced gravely before its friends. Then we had the usual birds. Storks nested in the town; there were rollers and kingfishers, and a hawk or two. But the desert, with its starved ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... leaned forward and sent streaming to the air the banner of the boys in gray. It was an old flag which had been captured from the Confederates, and which the urchin, the President's second son, Tad, had obtained possession of and considered an additional triumph to unfurl on ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... Andy's story of Tod Lapraik in Catriona, are grotesque imaginations of the school of Tam o' Shanter rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the story of The Bottle Imp are manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart, whatever may be said by those who insist on seeing allegory in ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... horn, nor feared to squeeze The viscous poison from his glowing gums. Nor wanted there the root of stunted shrub Which he lays ragged, hanging o'er the sands, And whence the weapons of his wrath are death: Nor the blue urchin that with clammy fin Holds down the tossing vessel for the tides. Together these her scient hand combined, And more she added, dared I mention more. Which done, with words most potent, thrice she dipped The reeking garb; thrice waved it through the air: She ceased; and suddenly the ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... painter has represented the little torch-bearing god disguised as a link boy. He is dressed in the clothes of a London street urchin, and behind him are the warehouses of ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... wayside hostel, called the "Red Bull," situated at the point where a cross-road cut the main road. We were still in Staffordshire, a matter on which Margaret had laughingly placed the utmost importance, though an urchin, standing by the rude signpost, could have flung a pebble into Cheshire. Houseroom was of the narrowest, and I was tucked away in the attics, in a room I had to crawl about in two-double, walking upright being out of the question. It was the grown-up ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... have a vision with me Of a home upon a hill; And my heart is sad with longing And my eyes with tear-drops fill. I would be the care-free urchin That I was so long ago When across the sun-lit meadows Rover with me used to go Yonder where the graceful lindens Threw their shadows far and cool, And the waters waited for me ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... walk across at low tide, on account of the water being so confoundedly shallow: but these are cavillings which the lofty and truly patriotic mind will at once and indignantly repudiate. The humble urchin, whose sole duty consists in throwing out a rope to each pier, and holding hard by it while the vessel stops, may one day be destined for some higher service: and where is the English bosom that will not beat at the thought, that the dirty lad below, whose exclamation of "Ease ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... all had been told to keep away from the ditch at the bottom of the field; but, notwithstanding this injunction, one little urchin, of the name of Jarvis, seeing a flower in the hedge on the opposite bank, which he wished to gather, crept nearer and nearer to ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping,—a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long; the gypsies didn't seem to mind ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... and made her inattentive to what was going on around her, and partly in that habit of talking to herself which has already been referred to. I had won her confidence and friendship from the time when I rescued her "pricky-back urchin" from being kicked to death by the farm boys, who declared that hedgehogs always made their way into the byres and milked the cows. Since then we had had many talks together, but this was the first time that I had accompanied her when ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... The urchin's lips parted in a wide grin, and he spoke for the first time. "Did the Germans do that?" The effect of his voice was startling, for it was deep and husky; it was the older man's ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... arches, reeds and columns bear legendary decorative motifs of the transition of plant to animal life in the forms of tortoise and other shell motifs;—kelp and its analogy to the prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the Crustacean Period, which is the second stratum of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... away from that bucket," he directed. It was the voice of authority commanding the urchin on the curb; of seasoned seniority chiding the heedlessness of the stripling ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... loved his two children, but he did not adore them. The fond father had hoped to delight in them, and he had been disappointed. Instead of the son he had dreamed of—a regular boy, a mischievous little urchin, one of those handsome little dare-devils with whom an old soldier could live over again his own youth and hear once more, as it were, the sound of gunpowder—M. Mauperin had to do with a most rational ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... the eye of his whole party—turned towards Lady Gorgon and Sir George in a most unholy triumph. Sir George (who always stood during prayers, like a military man) fairly sank down among the hassocks, and Lady Gorgon was heard to sob as audibly as ever did little beadle-belaboured urchin. ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is superior to Pascal. I confess that I at times feel humiliated to think that it cost me five or six years of arduous research, and the study of Hebrew, the Semitic languages, Gesenius, and Ewald to arrive at the result which this urchin achieves in a twinkling. These pilings of Pelion upon Ossa seem to me, when looked at in this light, a mere waste of time. But Pere Hardouin observed that he had not got up at four o'clock every morning for forty years to think as all the world ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... the most admired, of the statues that adorn Festival Hall is the "Boy Pan," nestled in the foliage at the base of the pedestal in the group just described. This roguish little god of woodland music has, besides his traditional attributes, a certain urchin quality that is very appealing. He has just taken his pipe from his lips, momentarily diverted by the presence of an alert lizard his melody has attracted. The lizard is here hidden in the leafage. The arch amusement of the whole figure, the mischievous, boyish smile ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... that I never recovered from. Soon after the arrival of the suit I donned it, and put off for Cincinnati on horseback. While I was riding along a street of that city, imagining that every one was looking at me, with a feeling akin to mine when I first saw General Scott, a little urchin, bareheaded, footed, with dirty and ragged pants held up by bare a single gallows—that's what suspenders were called then—and a shirt that had not seen a wash-tub for weeks, turned to me and cried: "Soldier! will you work? No, sir—ee; I'll sell my shirt first!!" The horse trade and its dire ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... can, in this case, easily and successfully accomplish artificial impregnation, and follow the formation of the stem-cell step by step within the space of ten minutes. If we put ripe ova of the star-fish or sea-urchin in a watch glass with sea-water and add a drop of ripe sperm-fluid, we find each ovum impregnated within five minutes. Thousands of the fine, mobile ciliated cells, which we have described as "sperm-threads" (Figure 1.20), make their way to the ova, owing to ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... before I had reason to regret the choice I had made of a victim. I should have let the cougar alone, and either held my fire, or directed it upon one of his urchin-like enemies; for the moment he was hors de combat, his assailants became mine— transferring their "surround" to my horse and myself, with all the savage fierceness they had ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... hollow and gray with mist, And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze, The master woke with cold. His feet were chill, And reft of sense; and we who watched him knew The fever had not wholly left his brain, For he was wandering, seeking nests of birds, An urchin from the green Ionian town Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs; And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun Laughed out—broad day—and flushed the garden gods Who bless our ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... of suppressed excitement prevailed over Montricheux. It was the day when the pretty lakeside town celebrated the Fete des Narcisses, and from the smallest street urchin, grabbing a bunch of narcissi in his grubby little hand and trying to induce the good-natured foreigner to purchase his wares, to the usually stolid hoteliers, vying with each other as to which of their caravanserais should blaze ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... turned around sharply, feeling justly incensed. Of course, he knew what it was—some good-for-nothing urchin finding a vent for his excited feelings. His parlor-maid, who was never in any hurry to open the door,—she had once kept him waiting ten minutes when he had forgotten his latch-key,—would certainly take no notice of this unseemly noise, but he, James Tapster, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... room, and he took a calm survey of it, in all its details. Then he marched up to a small urchin who, with much effort, was rocking a large chair to and fro, his chubby legs just reaching to the edge of its ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... a spring day six years gone, the wet, spongy margin of a tiny bayou under his feet, the great swamp at his back, the leafy undergrowth all around; his canoe and paddle waiting for him, and Bonaventure repeating to him—swamp urchin of fourteen—the costliest words of kindness—to both of them the costliest—that he had ever heard, ending with these two that Marguerite had spoken. As he resumed his work, he ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... that beautiful sentence, "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," several of those little volumes with gay bindings, and marvellous contents of fay and giant, which delight the hearth-spelled urchin, and which were "the source of golden hours" to the old man's grandchildren, in their ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... may come from any voice; the hardest, crudest most imbruted urchin at the street-corner ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... ecstatic face of the aged saint. It does not seem a part of the scene. You see the picture through it. A step further on there is a Holy Family, which seems to me the ultimate effort of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds his fair-haired child between his knees. The urchin holds up a bird to attract the attention of a little white dog on the floor. The mother, a dark-haired peasant woman, looks on the scene with quiet amusement. The picture is absolutely perfect in ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay



Words linked to "Urchin" :   nestling, fry, tike, street urchin, shaver, small fry, heart urchin, tyke, guttersnipe, nipper, child, minor, tatterdemalion, tiddler, youngster, kid, ragamuffin, edible sea urchin



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