Could you provide some backup for this?
Do you have a cite for that, ichabop? I always heard that the definitions of 2 and 3 were the other way around.
http://thesaurus.com/browse/migrant+worker
“a hobo is a migratory worker who likes to travel, a tramp travels without working, and a bum does not travel or work”
http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-GeorgiaHobo.html
Incidentally, “Hobo,” “Tramp,” and “Bum” are often used interchangeably, but by the 1920s, usage had stabilized, as quoted in Norm Cohen’s Long Steel Rail: “A hobo is a migratory worker. A tramp is a migratory non-worker. A bum is a stationary non-worker.” You can see why an itinerant would prefer to be called a hobo.
I’ve just found this alleged cite.:
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/famoustramp/terminology.html
Hobo (2) - From “Hoe Boy” after the itinerant 19th century farm laborers, who trainhopped with their belongings in a bundle tied to a hoe. The origin may be supported by a sentence that Barry Popik of the American Dialect Society found n 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.”
What do you think, real quote, or made up piece of garbage?
Are you able to check this out?