schlimazel

Thân thiện

A schlimazel always seems to drop his groceries on the sidewalk.

Definition

Noun: A person who is chronically unlucky or prone to constant misfortune; someone for whom things consistently go wrong through no apparent fault of their own. The term implies a passive victim of persistent bad luck.

Usage

The word is used to describe a person characterized by perpetual misfortune. It often carries a tone of pity or humorous resignation about the person's consistently bad luck. - It is typically used as a countable noun (e.g., a schlimazel, the poor schlimazel). - It describes an inherent, almost fateful state of being unlucky.

Examples

Advanced Usage

• The concept is often contrasted with a "schlemiel", a clumsy or inept person who causes mishaps. A common folk definition states: "A is the one who spills the soup. A is the one it gets spilled on."
• It can be used metaphorically to describe an entity, like a sports team, that is perennially unlucky:

Variants and Related Words

• Schlimazel is the standard English spelling adopted from Yiddish (שלימזל ).
• Schlemiel (noun): A habitual bungler; a clumsy, awkward person.
• Mazel (noun): Luck (often good luck, as in , meaning "good luck" or "congratulations").

Synonyms

• Jonah: A person who brings bad luck.
• Hard-luck case: Someone who experiences repeated misfortune.
• Unlucky person: A general term for someone without good fortune.

Idioms and Phrases

• A born schlimazel: Someone who seems destined to be unlucky from birth.
  • He's a born schlimazel; he even lost a winning lottery ticket.
• The schlemiel and the schlimazel: A proverbial pair representing the cause (clumsy fool) and the effect (unlucky recipient) of misfortune.

Học thuật

Noun

1. (Yiddish) a very unlucky or inept person who fails at everything

Từ đồng nghĩa

• shlimazel