Hobohemia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The informal community or subculture formed by hobos and wandering laborers who travel from place to place ; a district or settlement where such transient drifters gather and live
2. A loosely knit society of itinerant workers and vagrants who roam the country by freight train ; a neighborhood or haunt where these rootless travelers congregate
3. The whole world of footloose tramps and migrant laborers living on the road ; an area where such roving, homeless people settle temporarily

Etymology: Hobohemia is a blend of two American words: "hobo," the wandering, often jobless laborer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and "bohemia," the community of artists and writers living unconventional lives outside respectable society. Blending the two produced a name for the places where itinerant workers gathered, the shabby districts where the homeless and the restless congregated between jobs. The joke lies in the pairing. "Bohemia" had long carried a glamorous, romantic sense, evoking poets in garrets, while "hobo" carried the grime of the road and the railway freight car. Fusing them put a sort of rough-edged bohemianism onto the vagrant's world, a playful way of describing communities of drifters as if they were a rebellious artistic scene.