How do native English speakers distinguish Hobo and Homeless person?

In dictionary,

Hobo: One who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood.

Homeless person: one who has no home or haven.

I think hobo is a kind of very dirty person walking or living in the street or a corner of a station, while the homeless person simply has no home to live but they still wear good clothes, maybe not very cleaned but much cleaner than hobo.

I think the dictionary is missing something.

Can we use these two terms interchanged?


The OED makes clear that the term 'hobo' has been primarily an American one, first recorded in 1889.

The name appears to have arisen from people formerly called 'tramps' referring to themselves as 'hoboes'.

1889 Ellensburgh (Washington) Capital 28 Nov. 2/2 The tramp has changed his name, or rather had it changed for him, and now he is a ‘Hobo’.

1891 ‘J. Flynt’ in Contemp. Rev. Aug., The tramp's name for himself and his fellows is Hobo, plural Hoboes.

Essential to the notion of a hobo is vagrancy. Though the OED is not explicit on the matter, the term has been far less used in Britain. Throughout most of the time that it existed in the United States, the equivalent British term would have been 'tramp'.

The OED's last recorded instance of its use is in 1972, suggesting that it may be far less common than it once was.

The term 'homeless' means literally 'without a home', and carries none of the pejorative connotations that 'tramp' or 'hobo' once did. It may be used more specifically in the United Kingdom where local authorities have been legally obliged, for several decades, to provide homeless people with some form of housing. Such provided housing has not always been accepted and hence it has not been unusual, in Britain's large cities, to see homeless people sleeping rough.


A hobo is a migratory laborer and a tramp is a migratory non-laborer and a bum is a non-migratory non-laborer.

—"Oklahoma Slim," hobo

Migratory is a key quality of the hobo. Traditionally, hobos were known for "riding the rails," illegally hitching rides on freight trains to get from place to place. There is an imputed element of choice: to some extent, the hobo is a hobo because he (it is usually a man or a boy) enjoys traveling and sleeping under the stars. Hobos had their heyday in the early to mid-20th century in North America, and are much less common today for a variety of reasons.

The word hobo is sometimes used contemporarily today as a rough synonym for homeless person, probably because it's an inherently funny word that can take some of the edge off of a very unfunny topic (for example, Jon Stewart's frequent jokes about his hobo-killing hobby are a lot less funny if you substitute the word "homeless").


Hobos are peripatetic; homeless people are located in one location (but without a home); or at least there is no suggestion of travel.