hobo synonymous with panhandler or beggar

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 9:52 PM, paul johnson <paulzjoh at mtnhome.com> wrote:
> at 77 years old, growing up in Chicago. a hobo was a man who rode the
> rails

At 75, growing up in Saint Louis, the literary word was that both
hoboes and tramps had no fixed address and they both roamed: walking,
hitch-hiking, riding the rails, etc. But hoboes *earned* their keep by
odd-jobbing, whereas tramps robbed and stole.

In the wild, I knew only _hobo sandwich_, the StL name of the
submarine sandwich, and _tramp_ - literary equivalent: _bum_ - was
what today is "homeless person." A "bum" was a friend or an
acquaintance who was always "on the bum," "bumming" a cigarette here,
a stick of gum there, a five-cent glass of beer yonder.

Down home in Texas BE, a "tramp" was the homeless guy that did some
work or other for a half-dollar and a meal served to him as he sat on
the back steps. My grandmother would give such men a meal, in any
case, whether she had any work for them or not. Neither "bum" nor
"hobo" was ever used, IME.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org