to feel like a hobo
- idiom
- Informal
:
sentirse como un vagabundo
- Wearing old clothes and eating soup from a can, he felt like a hobo.
Examples
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Sometimes, when money is tight, I feel like a hobo.
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After living out of her suitcase for weeks, she felt like a hobo.
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I feel like a hobo today.
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After losing my job, I felt like a hobo.
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After losing my job, I started to feel like a hobo with no place to call home.
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When I couldn't afford food for a week, I truly began to feel like a hobo.
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During the rough winter, sleeping on the streets made me feel like a hobo.
Antonyms
How Poor
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'feel' (experience) + 'like' (as if) + 'a hobo' (a homeless/itinerant person) yields 'to feel as if one is homeless or very poor.' This simile construction follows standard English patterns and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should be able to derive the meaning (noting that 'hobo' is somewhat colloquial and may be less familiar).
Etymology
The phrase feel like a hobo may come from the old image of a hobo, a poor traveler with few belongings and worn clothes. That's why when someone says they feel like a hobo, they mean they feel 'homeless' or 'very poor'.