Word of the Day

: June 16, 2010

guttersnipe

noun GUTT-er-snype

What It Means

1 : a homeless vagabond and especially an outcast boy or girl in the streets of a city

2 : a person of the lowest moral or economic station

guttersnipe in Context

"Class is the great British reality, and the more books I wrote the more [Evelyn Waugh] termed me an unregenerable guttersnipe." (Anthony Burgess, The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1991)

Did You Know?

“Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes,” wrote Mark Twain sometime around 1869. Twain was among the first writers to use "guttersnipe" for a young hoodlum or street urchin. In doing so, he was following a trend among writers of the time to associate "gutter" (a low area at the side of a road) with a low station in life. Other writers in the late 19th century used "guttersnipe" more literally as a name for certain kinds of snipes, or birds with long thin beaks that live in wet areas. "Gutter-bird" was another term that was used at that time for both birds and disreputable persons. And even "snipe" itself has a history as a term of opprobrium; it was used as such during Shakespeare’s day.