Editing Refusal of work (section)

===="Hobos", "tramps", and "bums"====
[[File:Hobos2.jpg|thumb|upright|Two hobos walking along railroad tracks, after being put off a train. One is carrying a [[bindle]].]]

A [[hobo]] is a [[Migrant worker#United States|migratory worker]] or homeless [[Vagabond (person)|vagabond]], often [[Poverty in the United States|penniless]].<ref>[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hobo Definition of 'hobo'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117024203/http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hobo |date=2021-11-17 }} from the [[Merriam-Webster]] website</ref> The term originated in the [[western United States|western]]—probably [[northwestern United States|northwestern]]—United States during the last decade of the 19th century.<ref name="oup">{{cite web|date=12 November 2008|title=On Hobos, Hautboys, and Other Beaus|url=http://blog.oup.com/2008/11/hobo/|access-date=5 August 2009|work=OUPblog|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|archive-date=11 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120411134104/http://blog.oup.com/2008/11/hobo/|url-status=live}}</ref> Unlike [[tramp]]s, who worked only when they were forced to, and bums, who did not work at all, hobos were workers who wandered.<ref name="oup" /><ref name="Mencken1945">{{cite book|last=Mencken|first=Henry Louis|title=[[The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States]]|publisher=[[A.A. Knopf]]|year=1945|isbn=978-0394400754|page=581|chapter=American Slang|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zh7Ma1SCthQC&pg=PA581|access-date=2018-11-13|archive-date=2020-08-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200820040559/https://books.google.com/books?id=zh7Ma1SCthQC&pg=PA581|url-status=live}}</ref>

In [[British English]] and traditional [[American English]] usage, a tramp is a long term [[Homelessness|homeless]] person who travels from place to place as an itinerant [[vagrancy (people)|vagrant]], traditionally walking or [[hiking]] all year round.

While some tramps may do odd jobs from time to time, unlike other temporarily homeless people they do not seek out regular work and support themselves by other means such as [[begging]] or [[Waste picker|scavenging]]. This is in contrast to:
* [[Slacker|bum]], a stationary homeless person who does not work, and who begs or steals for a living in one place.
* hobo, a homeless person who travels from place to place looking for work, often by "[[freighthopping]]", illegally catching rides on freight trains
* [[Schnorrer]], a [[Yiddish]] term for a person who travels from city to city begging.

Both terms, "tramp" and "hobo" (and the distinction between them), were in common use between the 1880s and the 1940s. Their populations and the usage of the terms increased during the [[Great Depression]].

Like "hobo" and "bum", the word "tramp" is considered vulgar in [[American English]] usage, having been [[Euphemism treadmill#Euphemism treadmill|subsumed in more polite contexts]] by words such as "homeless person." In [[colloquial]] American English, the word "tramp" can also mean a sexually [[promiscuous]] female or even [[prostitute]]. Tramps used to be known [[euphemism|euphemistically]] in [[England and Wales]] as "gentlemen of the road".

Tramp is derived from the [[Middle English]] as a verb meaning to "walk with heavy footsteps", and to go hiking. [[Bart Kennedy]], a self-described tramp of 1900 US, once said "I listen to the tramp, tramp of my feet, and wonder where I was going, and why I was going."<ref>[[Bart Kennedy]], ''A Man Adrift'', [https://archive.org/stream/manadriftbeingle00kennrich#page/160/mode/2up p. 161], Chicago, H.S. Stone, 1900.</ref>