Word.ws English Dictionary

rough sleepers

rough sleepers is the plural of rough sleeper.

Meaning of rough sleeper

Noun

rough sleeper (plural rough sleepers)

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) A homeless person who sleeps outdoors.
    • In England, meanwhile, government figures show the number of rough sleepers – a small fraction of the total homeless population – climbed from 1,768 in 2010 to 4,677 last year (and since the official count is based on a single evening, charities say the real figure is far higher).2019 June 3, Jon Henley, “'It’s a miracle': Helsinki's radical solution to homelessness”, in The Guardian

Questions about rough sleepers

What is rough sleepers the plural of?
Rough sleepers is the plural of rough sleeper.

Words near rough sleepers in the dictionary

  1. rough sharks
  2. rough slant
  3. rough slants
  4. rough sledding
  5. rough sleeper
  6. rough sleepers
  7. rough sleeping
  8. rough string
  9. rough strings
  10. rough stuff
  11. rough trade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rough sleepers (page history and authors); rough sleeper (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “rough sleepers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rough_sleepers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.