stowaway
noun/ˈstəʊəˌweɪ/
Etymology From stow away, from stow and away.
1
A person who hides on board a ship, train, etc. so as to get a free passage.
- “Oh, I don't mind 'em, sir,” said Archy; “I knew it all before now. Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What say ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask.”1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The First Lowering”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 242:
- In every sense of the expression he is ‘on deck’; but my Jim, for the most part, skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway.1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter XIX, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC, page 213:
2 more examples
- One explanation came to me, and I leaped at it—the possibility of a stowaway hidden in the hold, some maniacal fugitive who had found in the little cargo boat’s empty hull ample room to hide.1914, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter VII, in The After House:
- My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny.1922 February, James Joyce, “[15]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC: