urchin

noun

1. 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.”

2. 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.”

3. A sea urchin.
4. 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[…]”

5. (historical)A neutron-generating device that triggered the nuclear detonation of the earliest plutonium atomic bombs.
6. (obsolete)A hedgehog.
7. (obsolete)A mischievous elf supposed sometimes to take the form of a hedgehog.

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