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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

hobo.

A wandering homeless person, especially (historical) one illegally travelling by rail or (derogatory) a penniless, unemployed bum.

4 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhəʊ.bəʊ/UK/ˈhoʊ.boʊ/US/ˈhəʉ.bəʉ/Australia
  1. A wandering homeless person, especially (historical) one illegally travelling by rail or (derogatory) a penniless, unemployed bum.

    Canada · US
  2. Any migratory laborer, whether homeless or not.

    Canada · US
  3. A kind of large handbag.

Where this word comes from

Unknown. Possibly a contraction of ho, boy or the dialectal English term hawbuck (“lout, clumsy fellow, country bumpkin”).

verb/ˈhəʊ.bəʊ/UK/ˈhoʊ.boʊ/US/ˈhəʉ.bəʉ/Australia
  1. To be a hobo, tramp, bum etc.

    intransitive
    Joe idly hoboed through half the country till he realized hoboing never gets you anywhere in life.
Where this word comes from

Unknown. Possibly a contraction of ho, boy or the dialectal English term hawbuck (“lout, clumsy fellow, country bumpkin”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.