I was just asking the other day if anyone knew where the phrase came from. No one on the OotS forum seemed to have any idea.
And no, no one thought it was offensive.
/Isn't the word "hobo" deprecated nowadays?
Generally, anymore, this word lands into 'contextless offender' category. It is filled with words that people have chosen to take offense at with no understanding of the word, and no consideration of context. To give another example, the word "nerd" when used to describe one's self is probably not pejorative, but there are those who will take offense to it anyway.
As for 'hobo', the origin story is below...
Yes. "Hobos" are real people with real problems. Even "homeless" is not accurate as they often have homes, just not houses.
"Hobos" conjures stereotypes of people in fingerless gloves wandering from place to place leaving marks and signs as they travel. It comes from hundred year old stereotypes, from times before EI or social services. Let alone those with mental illness. People who half choose a life of freedom on the road.
Now, while the stereotypes conjured by the pejorative "hobo" should not be applied to real people they actual work well for
what we're describing.
I actually learned this one fairly recently (
etymology being one of my many, mostly useless, hobbies.)
Hobo actually came from men with skill sets oriented towards agricultural labor who carried the tool of their trade with them as they went place to place, following the work. That tool, the common hoe. They were 'Hoe boys' (not a boy band) that could be found near most agricultural commodity rail yards looking for work, and they were some of this century's earliest migrant farm workers. Often, because of the nature of such work, they tended towards a nomadic lifestyle. And, probably as a further result of that lifestyle, they tended not to have any investment in the communities they traveled through and thus became labeled as the source of all sorts of local ills.
The phrase became more mainstream when the depression set in, and those wandering laborers surged in population.
So, as migrant workers carrying the tool of their trade who are blamed (not always unjustly) for the ills of the communities they visit, I find it a fitting analogy.
