guttersnipe

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2020 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>guttersnipe</strong> &#149; \GUTT-er-snype\&nbsp; &#149; <em>noun</em><br /> <p><strong>1 :</strong> a young <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vagabond">vagabond</a> <strong>:</strong> an outcast boy or girl in the streets of a city</p> <p><strong>2 :</strong> a person of the lowest moral or economic station</p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"He had blackmailed another ten dollars out of the urchin, also forcing the waif to watch the wagon while he spent the afternoon at Leow's State watching a film about drag-racing teenagers. The <em>guttersnipe</em> was definitely a discovery…."— <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xXxWIS_KF5gC&amp;pg=PP287#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">John Kennedy Toole, <em>A Confederacy of Dunces</em>, 1980</a></p> <p>"Uneducated flower girl Eliza Doolittle, on the other hand, transforms from what Higgins calls a '<em>guttersnipe</em>' into a proper lady." — <a href="https://www.startribune.com/broadway-tour-of-my-fair-lady-gorgeous-and-problematic-at-orpheum-in-minneapolis/568486052/?refresh=true">Rohan Preston, <em>The Star Tribune</em> (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 5 Mar. 2020</a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>"Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes," wrote Mark Twain sometime around 1869. Twain was among the first writers to use <em>guttersnipe</em> for a young hoodlum or street urchin. In doing so, he was following a trend among writers of the time to associate <em><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gutter">gutter</a></em> (a low area at the side of a road) with a low station in life. Other writers in the late 19th century used <em>guttersnipe</em> more literally as a name for certain kinds of snipes, or birds with long thin beaks that live in wet