Other forms: tramps
A tramp is somebody with no home who wanders about. An old tramp, the tramp on the road, dressed like a tramp.
The word is dated and can be an insult, so homeless person is the current term. As a verb it means to walk heavily, which is where the noun came from, and a tramp steamer is a ship with no fixed route.
1nountrampSomebody with no home who wanders about.
“An old tramp was sleeping on a bench in the park, wrapped in newspapers.”
tramp is a person.
Middle English trampen means to walk heavily, from a Low German word meaning to stamp.
Proto-West Germanic
*trampan — to step
Middle Dutch
trampen — to stamp
Middle Low German
trampen — to stamp
Middle English
trampen — to walk heavily
English, today
tramp
Built from
From Middle English trampen (“to walk heavily”), from Middle Low German trampen (“to stamp”) (trampeln (“to walk with heavy steps”), see trample) or from Middle Dutch trampen (“to stamp”), from Proto-West Germanic trampan (“to step”). a doublet of tremp. Cognate with Dutch trampen (“to stamp, kick, step”), dialectal German trampen (“to step, walk, tread”), whence commoner German trampeln (“to trample”). Probably related to trap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA