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Sadly, there is (to our knowledge) no such day. Talk Like a Pirate Day, on the other hand, is strictly observed in many quarters, and it’s just a matter of time before swearing like an old prospector gets a day of its own too. But since no one’s around to stand up for the long-defunct dialect of the hobo, it may as well be us — so I hereby declare today, November 21, Talk Like a Hobo Day! To get you started, here’s some of our favorite, most colorful hobo lingo. Study well!
Especially colorful hobo lingo
Barnacle: a person who sticks to one job for more than a year.
Bone-polisher: a dangerous dog. (This could also be mailman lingo.)
C, H and D: short for “cold, hungry and dry,” ie, without alcoholic libations.
California blankets (AKA “Hoover blankets”): newspapers, intended to be used for bedding.
Catching the Westbound: to die.
Doggin’ it: traveling by Greyhound bus.
Grease the track: to be run over by a train.
Sky pilot: a preacher.
Carrying the banner: to keep in constant motion so as to avoid being picked up for loitering or to keep from freezing.
Chuck a dummy: to pretend to faint.
Cover with the moon: to sleep out in the open.
Honey dipping: working with a shovel in the sewer. (Akin to modern slang word “honey wagon,” otherwise known as a porta-potty.”)
Angel: a person who gives you more than you’d expect them to.
Block scrapings: leftover meat begged from a butcher.
Bossy in a bowl: beef stew.
Bull horrors: a psychological condition marked by obsessive fear of the police.
Dead soldier: an empty whiskey bottle on the side of the road.
To decorate the mahogany: to buy a round of drinks.
Glomming the grapevine: to steal clothes hanging from a clothesline.
“How strong are you?”: “How much money do you have?”
Library birds: hoboes who sleep in libraries.
Lighthouse: a hobo skilled at recognizing plainclothes detectives.
Robbing the mail: snatching food and milk delivered at doorsteps early in the morning.
Words that may have originated with hoboes which we still use today
Java: coffee
Junk: drugs
Kicks: Shoes
Main drag: the busiest road in town
Glad rags: a hobo’s best clothes
Big house: prison
On the fly: to hop a train while it’s in motion
Punk: any young kid
Easy mark: identified by written hobo code symbols as a place to get a free meal or bed.
Blowing smoke: boasting
Ding bat: a hobo who mooches off other hoboes
Fleabag: a sleeping bag or bedroll
Hobo place names
The Big Burg: New York City
Shy: Chicago
Mickeyville: Mechanicsville, New York
Slow town: Detroit
Studebaker Town: South Bend, Indiana
The Big Smoke: Pittsburgh
Casey (or kay-cee): Kansas City, Misourri
Land of Milk and Honey: the state of Utah
The Peg: Winnipeg, Canada
Illustration: Hobo #186 by Andertoons.
Comments (11)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
My friends and I used to lament; There goes another dead soldier, when we’d put down an empty bottle of beer (usually after about 4 or 5). I never knew that was Hobo lingo.
posted by Stew on 11-21-2007 at 8:50 am
Anyone think they also coined “wounded soldier”?
posted by Jonathan on 11-21-2007 at 8:51 am
In these parts, a honey wagon is a truck that pumps out septic tanks. They can be used to empty out porta-potties, but the pots have plenty of aliases of their own.
posted by Teal on 11-21-2007 at 9:38 am
“Honey-dipper” and “honey wagon” are terms that go back to the time when outhouses were the most common form of sanitation.
Outhouses didn’t act like a septic tank, per se – a septic tank uses naturally occuring bacteria to metabolize the waste and the resulting liquid goes thru an overflow to a leaching field, where it is absorbed into the ground.
With an outhouse (especially if you had a large family) the pit beneath the outhouse would fill up. You’d call the honey dippers who’d come and pump it out into the honey wagon. Either that or you’d shovel some dirt into the hole and move the outhouse.
posted by Doc on 11-21-2007 at 10:35 am
Well, on the bright side, I will never think of honey the same way again…
posted by GTT on 11-21-2007 at 10:38 am
The term honeydipper is alive and well in NJ. I used to work for a plumber and this term was often used.
posted by Beth on 11-21-2007 at 11:24 am
A little off topic, today is also ‘No Music Day’. Check out the NPR clip at npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16476782
posted by Trena on 11-21-2007 at 2:10 pm
my grandfather rode the rails out to california during the depression. i remember one time when my daughter polished off her baby bottle, my grandfather said, ‘there’s another dead soldier.’ after reading this, his comment makes sense.
posted by shelly on 11-21-2007 at 10:21 pm
re: “Doggin’ it: traveling by Greyhound bus”
I always thought “doggin’ it” meant walking. As in “my dogs are tired” (my feet hurt) that sort of thing.
posted by Valentine on 11-21-2007 at 10:45 pm
read Ironweed by Kennedy to learn more about the Hobo life.
It won several prizes and then was made into a movie in 1987 that won several awards
posted by chris coultas on 11-25-2007 at 4:30 pm
yall are holarious
posted by reba r. on 11-29-2007 at 1:18 pm