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- DictionarySchle·miel/SHləˈmē(ə)l/
noun
- 1. a stupid, awkward, or unlucky person: informal North American "he seems like the classic underdog schlemiel"
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an unlucky or clumsy (= physically awkward) person: The character is a bit of a schlemiel, someone who finds himself the butt of jokes. SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases. Inability and awkwardness. accident-prone. adorkable. all thumbsidiom. amateurishly. fumblingly. functional illiteracy. gauchely. inexpertly.
A schlemiel is a somewhat dopey, awkward person. You might angrily call your brother a schlemiel after he drops the cake you've spent all day making, stumbles, and sits on it. Nothing every goes quite right for a schlemiel — he's the guy who never seems to get any good luck, and who's less than brilliant and not particularly graceful.
- Stories of Chelm
- Motke Habad
- Failures of All Sorts
- Humor as Weapon
It is from these roots that the schlemiel gradually became a stock figure of Jewish anecdote. In some stories, he seems to be a citizen of Chelm [a mythical village populated, according to Jewish folklore, by fools] and, like each of its citizens, a misrepresenter of reality. For example, the medieval story of Shemuliel is often retold as if it ha...
However, if the “Wise Men of Chelm” stories portray an ironic sort of wisdom, the Motke Habad stories [a figure from Jewish folklore] shrink the faults of the many into the characteristics of a single figure. Like the superhuman exploits of a Paul Bunyan in an American frontier context, the machinations of Motke Habad became a barometer for the s...
As I have suggested earlier, the schlemiel’s failures come in a variety of sizes and shapes. At times he is the cuckolded one (Shemuleil) or the amateur entrepreneur (Motke). On other occasions, he is the henpecked husband — a fate as much to be feared as cuckoldry and deeply entrenched in a sensibility that had strong leanings toward misogynism....
It was Yiddish — rather than Hebrew -0 which emerged in the lands of the Diaspora as the language of daily living…. It was primarily a folk tongue, a perfect vehicle for the cultural values known as Yiddishkeit and the continued survival of the species. If the “goyim” could boast of armies and power, the shtetl Jewry could offer up sharp retorts b...
- Sanford Pinsker
Schlemiel definition, an awkward and unlucky person for whom things never turn out right. See more.
May 22, 2024 · noun. Slang. an ineffectual, bungling person who habitually fails or is easily victimized. : also sp. schleˈmihl. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. Word origin.
Definition of schlemiel. as in loser. Synonyms & Similar Words. Relevance. loser. chump. oaf. palooka. lout. schnook. turkey. dolt. idiot. dullard. ignoramus. moron. lubber. imbecile. blunderer. numbskull. clodhopper. dunce. hulk. know-nothing.
What does the noun schlemiel mean? There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun schlemiel . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.
