# HoBo **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 24, 2005, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979 "2005-03-24T00:54:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/1 "2005-03-24T00:54:27Z")
[Origin of Hobo](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_243b.html) Cecil omits another theory: its short for **Ho** meward **Bo** und, unproven but IMHO more likely than _Hey, beau._ ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/2 "2005-03-24T03:11:36Z")
Most etymologists find explanations that involve acronyms to be unconvincing at best, especially when the word has an origin earlier than the 20th century. There’s not the slightest evidence for it in this case. [World Wide Words](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hob1.htm) echoes Cecil and adds: > [@](#): > > The word in its modern form was first recorded in the north-western US. Here’s the first example I know about, which comes from the Ellensburgh Capital in Washington State, in November 1889: “The tramp has changed his name, or rather had it changed for him, and now he is a ‘Hobo’ ”. Note the initial capital letter, which also turns up in other early examples, and which has led many writers to conclude that it was a proper name, or at least the hoboes own name for themselves. > > [snip] > > As to where it came from, there are several theories. One writer has pointed out possible parallels with English dialect words hawbuck and hawbaw for a coarse or clumsy fellow, but there seems to be no clear evidence for its movement from Britain to the north-west of the USA. A more common explanation is that it derives either from a greeting “Ho, Bo!” (or “Ho, Beau!”) of one migrant to another, or a challenge or greeting used by railway workers: “Ho boy!”. > > This origin may be supported by a sentence that Barry Popik of the American Dialect Society found in the New Orleans Picayune of 19 August 1848: “A year’s bronzing and ‘ho-boying’ about among the mountains of that charming country called Mexico, has given me a slight dash of the Spanish”. But the Random House Dictionary of American Historical Slang carefully notes that the big gap between this and the next appearance of the word leaves a lot of questions unanswered, as is so often the case. Also see this [earlier thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=96814) on another unconvincing derivation. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/3 "2005-03-24T11:50:57Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Most etymologists find explanations that involve acronyms to be unconvincing at best, especially when the word has an origin earlier than the 20th century. Yes, I’ve often heard that, however its not really an acronym, but a portmanteau word. I believe these existed long before Lewis Caroll named them. > [@](#): > > There’s not the slightest evidence for it in this case. I never claimed there was. In fact I specifically stated that it’s unproven. I’m not claiming it nto be the true origin of the word, just that it is a theory that has been advanced and ought to be listed with the other theories. Thnere’s not much evidence fot the other theories either. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/4 "2005-03-24T12:41:51Z")
Even with the advent of digitizing of historic newspapers and electronically searchable databases, we’ve only been able to push back the first print cite to September of 1888. I found this one, and it’s one of my pet projects to continue searching for the origin(which is still a mystery). The one thing that I can generalize about from having read 10-20 newspaper cites from 1888-1895 is the fact that the word was first used in the Western US and could mean not only a _tramp or bum_ but was a term often used in connection with railroad _laborers_, many of whom were foreigners with no family ties. They did meanial work for the railroads and had no permanent location. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/5 "2005-03-24T12:53:23Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > They did meanial work for the railroads Tying the dolls of Grange members’ children to the tracks? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/6 "2005-03-24T15:56:06Z")
A technical point: a word composed of first syllables is just as much an acronym as one composed of first letters. A portmanteau word virtually always is a first syllable combined with a final syllable, as in brunch, Oxbridge, motel, smog, chocoholic. Hey, beau to hobo would be neither, but a type of slurring of syllables which we know to be common linguistically. Maybe **samclem** can correct me, but I don’t think that there are any authenticated cases of early word coinages in the style of hobo from Homeward Bound, which is why etymologists just dismiss these theories out of hand. And that’s not even taking into account the early uses which were of itinerants with no fixed home, who wouldn’t be homeward bound at any time. ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/7 "2005-03-26T02:17:35Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Maybe **samclem** can correct me, but I don’t think that there are any authenticated cases of early word coinages in the style of hobo from Homeward Bound, which is why etymologists just dismiss these theories out of hand. So what is the earliest authenticated coinage of this type? (And one other thing I’ve been wondering about: What do you call a word like “gaydar?” A portonym?) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/8 "2005-03-26T03:04:39Z")
A pun. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/9 "2005-03-26T03:44:57Z")
chukhung writes: \> So what is the earliest authenticated coinage of this type? The usual rule of thumb is that if there’s a claim that there’s a coinage based on an acronym before 1910, it’s almost certainly wrong. Acronyms more or less began to be used in World War I, started to be used in government agencies in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but the real boom for them began during World War II. The word “acronym” first appeared in print in 1943. There are a few examples of acronymic coinage in the nineteenth century, but there’s only one such word that you have ever heard of - “O.K.” It was established in an important academic paper in the 1940’s written by Allan Walker Read that “O.K.” came from the habit of hip young people in Boston in 1838 of misspelling phrases (in this case, misspelling “all correct” as “oll korrect”) and then using the abbreviation for them as a hip way of saying the phrase (and hence, “O.K.” to mean “all right” or “good” or whatever). Read had to give a whole lot of citations to convince other etymologists that this was the correct etymology, since other etymologists knew how rare it was in the nineteenth century for people to turn acronyms into words. We’ve discussed the etymology of “O.K.” many times on the SDMB. Many, many, many times. Really. Just do a search on “Allan Walker Read,” “oll korrect,” or “acronym” to find a few of these threads. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/10 "2005-03-26T04:10:22Z")
And “OK” (or even “Okay”) isn’t really a proper acronym, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/11 "2005-03-26T12:53:34Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Acronyms more or less began to be used in World War I, started to be used in government agencies in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but the real boom for them began during World War II. So it sounds like business names such as"Nabisco" or the “REO Car Company” were among some of the earliest acronyms. I wonder if seeing names like those stamped on widely distributed commercial products may have helped to spread the idea of acronymic word coinage around the country. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/12 "2005-03-26T16:14:28Z")
“Nabisco” was the name of a particular 1901 cookie, and later an inclusive brand name, but did not become the actual company name until 1971. In my childhood, the National Biscuit Company was using “NBC” as the short form of its corporate name, which was quite confusing to me and other children, especially since the company icon vaguely suggested a television antenna. The car company (1904), however, did occasionally use the spelling “Reo”, so, despite the rock band, it does appear to have been a true acronym. ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/13 "2005-03-26T18:25:03Z")
> [@John W. Kennedy](#): > > “Nabisco” was the name of a particular 1901 cookie, and later an inclusive brand name, but did not become the actual company name until 1971. I wonder when and how widespread the name “Nabisco” was in the early part of the previous century. In H.L. Mencken’s [_The American Language_](http://www.bartleby.com/185/), published in 1921, the author cites a 1913 study entitled “Word-Coinage and Modern Trade Names” by Dr. Louise Pound and says > [@](#): > > They fall, she finds, into a number of well defined classes. There are the terms that are simple derivatives from proper names, _e. g., listerine, postum, klaxon;_ the shortenings, e\*. g., jell-o, jap-a-lac;\* the extensions with common suffixes, _e. g., alabastine, protectograph, dictograph, orangeade, crispette, pearline, electrolier;_ the extensions with new or fanciful suffixes, _e. g., resinol, thermos, grafanola, shinola, sapolio, lysol, neolin, crisco;_ the diminutives, _e. g., cascaret, wheatlet, chiclet;_ the simple compounds, _e. g., palmolive, spearmint, peptomint, auto-car;_ the blends, _e. g., cuticura, damaskeene, locomobile, mobiloil;_ the blends made of proper names, _e. g., Oldsmobile, Hupmobile, Valspar;_ **the blends made of parts of syllables or simple initials, _e. g., Reo, nabisco;_** the terms involving substitution, _e. g., triscut; and the arbitrary formations, e. g., kodak, tiz, clysmic, vivil_. > Bolding added, italics as in the original. Mencken also mentions the Italian company Fiat and describes its name as “a blend made of the initials of Fabbrica Italiano Automobili Torino.” ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2005, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/14 "2005-03-27T13:34:43Z")
> [@chukhung](#): > > I wonder when and how widespread the name “Nabisco” was in the early part of the previous century. Doing a quick newspaper database search, it was in every newspaper in the US in advertisements for their “Nabisco sugar cookie.” Giant illustrated ads. Special Christmas packaging for the holidays, a la Oreos. Hundreds of cites from 1902-1915 But the last line in the ad always said “National Biscuit Company” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/15 "2005-03-28T18:32:17Z")
It seems to me rather irrelevant whether “Nabisco” was used as the name of the company. The question is about acronymic words in general, not just company names, and “Nabisco” did exist as a word for a particular cookie, as those ads attest. ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/16 "2005-03-28T19:47:51Z")
That was my fault. In post #11 of this thread, I should have said “trade names such as ‘Nabisco’ or the ‘REO Car Company’” instead of “business names”. Sorry for the confusion. But I think my original hypothesis still has some merit. Why did acronymic word coinage (almost unknown prior to 1900) become fairly common in the 20th century? I think the advertising and distribution of products such as Nabisco cookies or Reo automobiles may have helped spread the idea. (Hey, **samclem** , just out of curiosity, when did mentions of the Italian firm Fiat start showing up in American newspapers?) ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/17 "2005-03-29T00:04:07Z")
> [@chukhung](#): > > . > > (Hey, **samclem** , just out of curiosity, when did mentions of the Italian firm Fiat start showing up in American newspapers?) A quick check of just one database shows them selling 40 cars at the auto show in New YOrk in 1906 at prices between $6k and $14K. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Benway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@Dr.Benway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Benway)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2005, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/18 "2005-03-29T07:17:45Z")
I always thought ‘HOBO’ was an abbreviation for 'HO’BOKEN…ie:homeless ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2005, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/19 "2005-03-29T11:44:13Z")
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, **Dr Benway** , we’re glad to have you with us. A couple of things, though: First, when you start a thread, it’s a good idea to provide a link to the column you’re talking about. Helps keep everyone on the same page. In this case, [What’s the origin of the word “hobo”?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_243b.html) Second, there’s already a thread about the “Hobo” column. So, I’m going to merge your thread into that prior thread. No biggies, you’ll know for next time, and, as I say, welcome. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2005, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobo/295979/20 "2005-03-29T18:09:22Z")
That [earlier column](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=96814) I mentioned up above also has a suggestion of Hoboken as the origin of hobo. The usual problem: not the slightest actual evidence.