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urchin

Pronunciation: /ˈɜːtʃɪn/

The English word “urchin” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A hedgehog.
  2. A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form of a hedgehog.
  3. A mischievous child.
  4. A street urchin, a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets.
  5. A sea urchin.
  6. 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.
  7. A neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs.

Etymology

From Middle English yrchoun, irchoun (“hedgehog; sea urchin”), from Old Northern French irechon, from Vulgar Latin *ērīciōnem, from Latin ērīcius. Compare modern French hérisson, whence the English doublet herisson.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.