homeless

[hohm-lis]

adjective

1. without a home or without permanent housing.

   a homeless refugee.

noun

(used with a plural verb)

1. Sometimes Disparaging and Offensive.,  Usually the homeless people who lack permanent housing or a fixed residence, collectively.

homeless

/ ˈhəʊmlɪs /

adjective

1. 1. having nowhere to live

   2. ( as collective noun; preceded by the )

      the homeless

Sensitive Note

There are a number of words used to label people who don’t have permanent housing. While the term homeless was used without controversy for some time, advocates for this population, many style guides, and some people who identify as members of this group now prefer other terms including unhoused, houseless, and unsheltered. The alternative terms to homeless each have a specific nuance of meaning. Unsheltered, for example, includes people who sleep in cars and under overpasses, but not people in temporary housing like city shelters. Houseless and unhoused both mean that a person lacks permanent housing, but may still be a member of a community that they call home, in which case the designation homeless is imprecise. Further, someone’s homeless status is often temporary, as expressed in the phrases “people moving through houselessness,” “people experiencing homelessness,” and “unsheltered people.” Nevertheless, the term homeless is easily understood and even preferred as a term of self-identification by many members of this community. The designation homeless is still widely used and only sometimes offensive or disparaging. However, one should be mindful of the negative connotation this word may have and the many unfortunate associations it has had with poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, or crime. The word should not be used as a euphemism for these other statuses and stigmatized conditions. Homeless should be used only in the strict denotative meaning, and alternative expressions that put the person first, like “an individual experiencing homelessness,” are often preferable.

Other Word Forms

• homelessly adverb
• homelessness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of homeless¹

First recorded before 1000; home ( def. ) + -less ( def. )

Example Sentences

Since her death, I have used some of the money from the sale of her house to pay many of my uncle’s bills because my grandma wouldn’t want him to end up homeless.

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The problem is that as of this week, Barcelona is technically homeless.

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Far from families and friends, dumped patients join the swelling ranks of the homeless.

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Federal officials reported that homeless people were being coerced by demonstrators into rattling the gate outside the ICE facility, Portland police said.

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She is a registered independent who at one point called herself “politically homeless,” unrepresented by the two main U.S. parties.

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Related Words

• houseless 
• unhoused 
• unsheltered