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November 18, 2023
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| Word of the
Week--"urchin"
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Definition--a small mischievous child.
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Discussion--Dickens novels are
littered with urchins, small
raggedly children who do their best to survive in an adult world. The
root of this term comes from the
Latin for hedgehog, a rather prickly unkempt-looking animal. Its use to
describe the spiny marine
animal, the sea urchin, came later.
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| Etymology--Urchin developed
from Middle English urchoun,
which means hedgehog, borrowed from the Old French erichon,
herichon, which
comes from the Latin ericius, also meaning hedgehog. Throughout
the 1500's the word was
used in English to describe a person with a hedgehog-like appearance. By
around 1550, it began to be
used to describe a raggedly clothed youngster.
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Jane Ellis
Previous Words of the Week
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