stowaway

• stow-away

From stow away, from stow and away.

• IPA^(key): /ˈstəʊəˌweɪ/

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stowaway (plural stowaways)

1. A person who hides on board a ship, train, etc. so as to get a free passage.
   • 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 57395299, page 242:

     “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.”

   • 1899 September – 1900 July​, Joseph Conrad, chapter 19, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, OCLC 8754022, page 213:

     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.

   • 1914, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter VII, in The After House‎:

     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.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[15]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], OCLC 560090630:

     My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny.

• towaways