hobo synonymous with panhandler or beggar

[George Thompson]

This website is devoted to "A No. 1".   He was a hobo (or tramp -- it seems
to use "hobo" and "tramp" interchangeably), active early in the 20th
C, and famous
enough to be named in one of Louis Armstrong's records ("Hobo, You Can't
Ride This Train").   His right name was Leon Ray Livingston.  He wrote and
published a number of books.
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/famoustramp/

A friend of mine is the head of the Boston chapter of the Industrial
Workers of the World and is collecting books by hoboes.  I don't know
whether he has any by A No. 1,  though he does have one illustrated by
Ernie Bushmiller.   (http://www.drawger.com/kroninger/?article_id=12528)

GAT

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 1:34 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> As good a guess as any.  It would connect it to (orig. Eng. dial.) "bo,"
> 'boy, usu. in direct address.'
>
> HDAS/OED cites begin only in 1889, from the Northwest. By the early
> '90s "hobo" seems to have been fairly current, though not outside railroad
> and hobo circles.
>
> JL
>
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: hobo synonymous with panhandler or beggar
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > JL wrote, inter alia:
> >
> > ....It's especially interesting since the ety. of "hobo" remains
> > unknown.....
> >
> > ****
> >
> > For what it may be worth, the earliest known usage--at least the earliest
> > one mentioned on ads-l--of "hobo" offers a (proposed) etymology.
> >
> > St. Paul daily globe., November 30, 1885, Page 8, Image 9 col. 1 -2
> >
> >
> http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90059522/1885-11-30/ed-1/seq-9/;words=tramp+Hobo+HOBO+Tramp?date1=1836&rows=20&searchType=advanced&proxdistance=5&date2=1885&ortext=&proxtext=tramp+hobo&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&index=0
> >
> > After mention of Hennepin County, etc., in  the section "thieves'
> > Vocabulary":
> >
> > ....An overcoat is a "Ben." Hobo is a call to attract attention, the same
> > as Hello in the average citizen's vernacular. It is pronounced with the
> > long sound of the vowel, o, in both syllables, and is sometimes uttered
> > with the aspirate omitted, as "Obo," and is the shibboleth of the
> > fraternity of bums and crooks. It s now commonly applied by them as a
> > generic term to designate he order....
> >
> > Stephen Goranson
> > http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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