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1 sie 2018 · Sometime around the mid-15th century, the English stopped calling these small mammals covered in bristles "urchins" and decided that they looked like piglets that typically lived in shrubs. According to Etymonline, the term hedgehog is a compound word formed by hedge (n.) and hog (n.)
Homeless youth are often called street kids, or urchins; the definition of street children is contested, but many practitioners and policymakers use UNICEF's concept of boys and girls, aged under 18 years, for whom "the street" (including unoccupied dwellings and wasteland) has become home and/or their source of livelihood, and who are ...
Sometime around the mid-15th century, the English stopped calling these small mammals covered in bristles "urchins" and decided that they looked like piglets that typically lived in shrubs. According to Etymonline, the term hedgehog is a compound word formed by hedge (n.) and hog (n.)
6 kwi 2023 · Urchin first appeared in the 13th century and then went through various iterations but the root of the word was the Latin ‘ericius’ which meant hedgehog. In hindsight that makes a lot of sense ...
Applied throughout 16c. to people whose appearance or behavior suggested hedgehogs, from hunchbacks (1520s) to goblins (1580s) to bad girls (1530s); meaning "poorly or raggedly clothed youngster" emerged 1550s, but was not in frequent use until after c. 1780.
This led me to research why "street children" are called "urchins". It seems that there used to be mythical, mischievous elves that turned themselves into hedgehogs (urchins, at the time). Mischievous children started being called "urchins" after those mythical elves.
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.
