urchin

plural urchins · alternative obsolete urchon

1. archaicdialectalA hedgehog.
2. obsoleteA mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form of a hedgehog.

   We'll dress [them] like urchins, ouphes, and fairies.

   c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv]

   1 more example

   In old wives tales that in old time did live, To whose odde tales much credit men did give, Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares, Urchins, and elves, to many a house repaires.

   1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 280

3. A mischievous child.

   And like these fresh green things were the dozens of babies, tots, toddlers, noisy urchins, laughing girls, a whole multitude of children of one family. For Collier Brandt, the father of all this numerous progeny, was a Mormon with four wives.

   1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 7, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC

4. A street urchin, a child who lives, or spends most of their time, in the streets.

   And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes / Forever on watch ran off each with a prize.

   a. 1879, William Howitt, The Wind in a Frolic

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.

   Here we have a carding-engine, with the drum surmounted with urchin or squirrel cards[…]

   1836, Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain […]

7. historicalA neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs.