Chrysti The Wordsmith: Vagrant Terms

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. They were once ironically called Knights of the road. Those American tramps bombs vagabonds and loafers who rode the rails and camped in hobo jungles. The tradition of the homeless wandering vagrant began after the Civil War when many young soldiers began following the railroads west according to some estimates there were sixty thousand men on the roads and rails by 19 0 5. They were known by many names. The tramp for example wandered from place to place begging thieving finding shelter where he could. This noun derives from the 14th century verb trap meaning trad or walk heavily when the word bomb was first recorded in Oregon in 1855. It meant drunken loafer. The moniker bomb was originally applied to wanderers during the California gold rush of 1849 then later two homeless Civil War veterans bum comes from the German verb boomtown to loaf or dawdle. The word hobo was first recorded in Washington State in 1889 but its

origin is unknown. The word was originally applied to lumber jacks or seasonal harvest workers of the Pacific Northwest. It might have been one vagabonds greeting to another hobo Bo being spelled B E A U. But here's another speculation wandering Civil War veterans always making a pretense of being homeward bound took the first two letters of the words in that phrase and fused them homeward bound or hobo. I'm Christie the wordsmith Christie the wordsmith the sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises. A high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry sued web dotcom.