What is hobo lingua? Hobo lingua is language used by traveling people or language that is itself traveling. During the "great depression" in the USA, illegally hopping trains and living on little or no money became popular. The people doing this, hobos, thought it would be a good idea to let each other know where to catch a train, get a meal, etc. So they came up with a set of symbols to represent various things. Modern "hobos", WiFi "war chalkers" have come up with a similar set of symbols to indicate open nodes (free internet) and such. These sets of symbols are well-documented elsewhere. This page only contains pre-slang—words that may not yet be used widely enough to be considered slang. You may submit your own pre-slang at the bottom of the page.