hobo
Americannoun
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a tramp or vagrant.
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a migratory worker.
noun
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a tramp; vagrant
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a migratory worker, esp an unskilled labourer
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of hobo
An Americanism dating back to 1885–90; origin uncertain
Explanation
Be careful when you call a vagrant or homeless person a hobo — although this is exactly what the word means, it is a somewhat offensive term. The end of the nineteenth century brought the start of the word hobo in the Western United States. No one is certain where the word came from, although there are a couple of educated guesses. One possible origin is the English word hawbuck, which means "country bumpkin," while another is the common working man's greeting or call during the building of the railroads in the West, ho, boy!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Its crowd regarded me as if I were a hobo, a single Coke was $10 and I promptly took the next train to Ventimiglia.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 10, 2026
Yes, it wasn't a boy; it was a little girl, but I couldn't tell because she was dressed like a hobo.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2023
The trilogy includes “The Areas of My Expertise,” a book that contains, among other things, a list of 700 hobo names.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2023
Fred Ward’s lonesome hobo face has turned up in enough films to make him a familiar figure to American moviegoers.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2022
“Hey, the hobo camp will be there tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind a bath neither.”
From "Life Is So Good" by George Dawson
Starting with “Rolling Nowhere,” his 1984 account of hopping trains with hoboes, Conover has made a career of immersing himself in seemingly impenetrable subcultures, then writing with sympathy and insight about his experiences.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 1, 2022
He traveled around the world — Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan — for high-profile magazine assignments and rode the rails across the United States, chronicling some of the last of the hoboes.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 11, 2022
Or will Rory’s talk of hoboes and the inconsequence of mankind as seen from space have some effect on Pete’s work on the new alpine skiing account?
From Slate ● May 7, 2012
Their ambiguous feelings about hoboes, he says, are nurtured by deeper ambiguous feelings about themselves.
From Time Magazine Archive
He traveled for a long time with the hoboes and worked for a short time as a scarecrow.
From "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo
Longtime Dylan followers are accustomed to the peculiar cast that haunts his songs — scarlet women, jughead criminals, wanton judges, sanctified hobos and unscrupulous gamblers — and they festoon these pages as well.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 31, 2022
In 2014, Deadspin published the article "Candy Corn Is Garbage," which said the candy was the diet of "hobos, serial murderers and Satan."
From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2022
The piece, presented by the Jacaranda Music series, is based on the tales of hobos and other travelers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2019
Antoinette Nwandu’s solution in this searing drama is to weld the story of two black youths in a city like Chicago to spiritual antecedents including enslaved African-Americans, biblical Israelites and Beckett’s hobos Vladimir and Estragon.
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2018
We explored in the one small wooded area within walking distance, looking for the hobos rumored to have made encampments.
From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
