Landleaper

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who roams from place to place without a settled home or steady work, living as a vagabond on the roads
2. Someone who wanders the countryside with no fixed abode, often regarded with suspicion as an idle drifter
3. An itinerant wanderer or vagrant who travels across the land rather than remaining in one settled community

Etymology: "Landleaper" is a variant of "landlouper," a word meaning a vagabond or wanderer with no fixed home. The two forms became entangled in English: "landlouper" was borrowed from Dutch "landloper," literally "land-runner," and it merged with a native English word, "landleaper," built from "land" and "leaper." The English term thus has two strands of descent running together, one imported and one homegrown. The Dutch original is a compound of "land," meaning land or country, and "loper," a runner or walker, so the sense of a person who roams the countryside without settling is built into its parts. The English "leaper" in the native form carries the same sense of moving from place to place, though the verb meaning to jump is not the source of the idea of wandering.