Sorner

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who imposes on others by staying at their home uninvited and living off their hospitality, especially in old Scottish usage
2. Someone who freeloads by forcing themselves into another household and demanding food and shelter without payment
3. A beggar of earlier times who took up lodging at a farm or cottage against the owner's wishes and lived at their expense

Etymology: "Sorner" is built from "sorn," a Scottish and northern English word meaning to impose oneself on someone's hospitality, and the suffix "-er," which marks a person who does the thing named by the base. So a sorner is, quite literally, one who sorns: someone who settles in on another's household and refuses to leave, eating and sleeping at their expense. The base is the older and more interesting piece. "Sorn" belongs to the vocabulary of Scots and northern dialect, where it describes the act of forcing oneself on a household, often with an implied threat or menace behind the hospitality demanded. The word thus carries a social rather than a physical sense: the freeloader's offence is not merely taking food but imposing one's presence on people who cannot easily refuse.

Synonyms: sponger, freeloader, parasite, scrounger