Landloper

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A wandering person with no fixed abode who drifts from place to place ; an unsettled roamer who lives outside the bounds of ordinary society
2. Someone who travels about without a permanent home ; a rover who moves through the countryside as an unwelcome outsider or outlaw
3. A drifter with no settled residence who wanders from district to district ; a vagabond living on the margins of respectable settled life

Etymology: Dutch sailors and merchants gave English a word for a drifter, and the English already had a near-twin of it waiting. "Landloper" comes from Dutch "landloper," literally "land-runner," a person who roams the countryside without a settled home or trade. The Dutch word was borrowed into English, where it merged with a native English form, "landleaper," built from "land" and "leaper" in the same sense of someone who leaps or runs about from place to place. The two forms blended, so English speakers ended up with a term that carried both a Dutch and an English inheritance. The spelling has wandered, and "landlouper" is a recognized alternative form of the same word. Both spellings preserve the Dutch "loper" element, which is a runner or walker, the same root that appears in the English word "interloper," someone who runs in between where they are not wanted.

Synonyms: vagabond, vagrant, tramp, rover, drifter

Antonyms: resident, inhabitant