tramp

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A romanticized depiction of a tramp in the United States in 1899.

The tramp [pronunciation trɛmp ] is an American social figure who is related to the hobo . The Duden defines the term as "tramp, wandering casual worker, especially in North America ".

Word history and meanings

The term tramp used to stand for migrant workers or day laborers , the expression "to tramp" initially meant something like "to hike" in English . The word was from the Middle Low German hitchhike starting a substantive, is originally from the proto Germanic * tremp- and in today's German nor trample related. Since the 1660s, a permanently wandering person (vagabond, vagrant ) was referred to in English as a tramp ; since 1786 meaning “long, arduous walk”. In particular in the American Civil War , the famine years of the 1840s in Northern Europe and the great famine in Ireland , which triggered a surge in emigration to North America, and most recently in the Great Depression of the 1930s, the term found further popularity.

In the understanding of the early 20th century a tramp looking in contrast to the Hobo but usually no permanent job , but only odd jobs . Thus, by Gerd Stein , referring to Robert Michels formulated: "Unlike the related figure of Hobo Tramp has been defined so that he does not like that travels and works , but that he travels and dreams ." Artistic found the figure initially use in United States vaudeville . Probably the most famous fictional character was played by Charlie Chaplin ("The tramp"), who often portrayed the life of a tramp in his films; initially acting villainically beyond ethical ties, later as a fool and increasingly committed to romantic-humanitarian ideals, but always as a victim of the social system surrounding him. In literary terms, the social figure becomes, for example, autobiographical by William Henry Davies in Supertramp. Autobiography of a vagabond thematized. In the 1960s, the music group Supertramp referred to this work in their band name.

In the sexual context, the word has also been used in English to refer to promiscuous women since 1922 . In this regard, the term was taken up ambivalently and ironically by Rodgers and Hart in the song title The Lady Is a Tramp of the musical Babes in Arms .

Today's meaning in the German hitchhiker ( substantiated by the verb hitchhiking ) is derived from hitchhiking 'to walk', but since the first half of the 20th century has also meant 'stop a car while hiking and ask for a ride', especially 'by hitchhiking, hitchhiking 'and has been established in this form since the 1950s; starting from Tramp in the second half of the 19th century. This establishment of the term is now often considered a so-called “ false friend ”, as this meaning only exists in German (cf. pseudo-Anglicism ) and should be translated as hitchhiker .

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Tramp  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tramp, der , duden.de, accessed on November 13, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c Tramp , Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed November 12, 2016
  3. ↑ hitchhiking in duden.de, accessed on November 13, 2016
  4. ↑ Todd DePastino (2005). Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America. Chicago University Press. pp. 1-48. ISBN 0226143791 .
  5. ^ Burnett, J., Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment, 1790–1990, Routledge, 2002, p.128.
  6. ↑ Gerd Stein: Foreword. In: Bohemien - Tramp - Sponti. Bohemian and alternative culture. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1982, pp. 10-17, here p. 15 (with reference to the sociologist Robert Michels ).
  7. ↑ Johannes Schmitt: Charlie Chaplin - a dramaturgical study, LIT-Verlag Münster 2006, p. 47; online in google books
  8. ↑ The Difference Between Hobos, Tramps And Bums , Knowledge Nuts of November 26, 2014, accessed on November 14, 2016 (English)
  9. ^ Gary Marmorstein, A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart , Simon and Schuster, 2013, p.298>
  10. ^ Tramper in DWDS , accessed on November 21, 2016
  11. ^ Friedrich Kluge: Etymological dictionary of the German language , p. 735 online in Google books
  12. ↑ False Friends - Germans like to tap into these language faux pas , Welt.de of November 14, 2013