HOMELESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does homeless mean? 

• HOMELESS (noun)
  The noun HOMELESS has 2 senses:

1. someone unfortunate without housing

2. poor people who unfortunately do not have a home to live in

  Familiarity information: HOMELESS used as a noun is rare.

• HOMELESS (adjective)
  The adjective HOMELESS has 2 senses:

1. without nationality or citizenship

2. physically or spiritually homeless or deprived of security

  Familiarity information: HOMELESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HOMELESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone unfortunate without housing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

homeless; homeless person

Context example:

a homeless was found murdered in Central Park

Hypernyms ("homeless" is a kind of...):

unfortunate; unfortunate person (a person who suffers misfortune)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "homeless"):

bag lady (a homeless woman who carries all her possessions with her in shopping bags)

Holonyms ("homeless" is a member of...):

homeless (poor people who unfortunately do not have a home to live in)

Derivation:

homeless (physically or spiritually homeless or deprived of security)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Poor people who unfortunately do not have a home to live in

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Context example:

the homeless became a problem in the large cities

Hypernyms ("homeless" is a kind of...):

poor; poor people (people without possessions or wealth (considered as a group))

Meronyms (members of "homeless"):

homeless; homeless person (someone unfortunate without housing)

Derivation:

homeless (physically or spiritually homeless or deprived of security)

• HOMELESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Without nationality or citizenship

Synonyms:

homeless; stateless

Context example:

stateless persons

Similar:

unsettled (not settled or established)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Physically or spiritually homeless or deprived of security

Synonyms:

dispossessed; homeless; roofless

Context example:

made a living out of shepherding dispossed people from one country to another

Similar:

unfortunate (not favored by fortune; marked or accompanied by or resulting in ill fortune)

Derivation:

homeless (poor people who unfortunately do not have a home to live in)

homeless (someone unfortunate without housing)

homelessness (the state or condition of having no home (especially the state of living in the streets))

 Context examples 

Homeless children have high rates of emotional and behavioral problems, often from having witnessed abuse.

(Homeless Health Concerns, NIH)

Such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless, and alone, but free.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

That's why the health of homeless people in the United States is worse than that of the general population.

(Homeless Health Concerns, NIH)

He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with agony I thought of what I left.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Poor health can contribute to being homeless, and being homeless can lead to poor health.

(Homeless Health Concerns, NIH)