【Vagabond】 , 【vagrant】 ,  【truant】 ,  【tramp】 ,  【bum】 ,  【hobo】  mean a person who wanders at will or as a habit.

【Vagabond】 may apply to a homeless wanderer lacking visible means of support, but more often it lacks derogatory implications and emphasizes the mere fact of wandering and implies a carefree fondness for a roaming life.

【Vagrant】 is more likely to imply disreputableness and in its common legal use it denotes a person without fixed or known residence whose habits or acts are such that he is likely to become a public menace or a public charge. Even in more general use the term tends to carry stronger implications of disreputableness and waywardness than  【vagabond】 .

【Truant】 carries as its strongest implication the habit of wandering away from where one ought to be or of loitering when one ought to be elsewhere and especially at school.

【Tramp】 is the ordinary and generally derogatory word for one who leads a wandering life; it can apply to any such person whether he moves about in search of work, especially seasonal work, or whether he lives by beggary and thievery.

【Bum】 basically applies to a lazy, idle, and often drunken, good-for-nothing, who will not work but habitually sponges on others. But  【bum】 , especially when qualified, may denote one who wanders in pursuit of a particular occupation or activity.

【Hobo】  is often distinguished from  【tramp】  , sometimes in terms of willingness to work, sometimes in terms of methods of travel, the  【tramp】  being then taken as one who typically tramps the roads, the  【hobo】 as one who typically rides surreptitiously on freight trains.

A common application of  【hobo】 is to the migratory worker who roves about following such seasonal occupations as harvesting and crop picking.