Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Luckless; unfortunate. synonym: unfortunate.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Without hap or luck; luckless; unfortunate; unlucky; unhappy.
- Synonyms Ill-starred, ill-fated, forlorn.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Without hap or luck; luckless; unfortunate; unlucky; unhappy
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Very
unlucky ; ill-fated. - adjective devoid of
talent orskill
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective deserving or inciting pity
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Back before they were Super Bowl champs, some called the hapless team the "Aints" and in shame would pull paper bags over their heads.
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Chapter 62 consists of a single word, "hapless" - the only word Orion's abridger cut from the chapter, trimming a 105-word sentence to 104; the book's first sentence is "methodically"; the final hunt for the white whale dissolves into pure punctuation.
Brit Lit Blogs no-reply@britlitblogs.com (Vertigo: Collecting 2010
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Like her and many others of our generation, I knew all the old gang pretty well but have met only a handful of today's lot, Maginnes, the Attwoods, Hanna, Dallat, Ritchie, McGrady, McDonnell and yes the "hapless" - (unkind and overstated) - Durkan.
Slugger O'Toole 2009
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Like her and many others of our generation, I knew all the old gang pretty well but have met only a handful of today's lot, Maginnes, the Attwoods, Hanna, Dallat, Ritchie, McGrady, McDonnell and yes the "hapless" - (unkind and overstated) - Durkan.
Slugger O'Toole 2009
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The highlight of her reign of terror: The now-infamous "Saving Private Ryan" interpretive dance, part of a longer sequence, assembled to celebrate nominated film scores, which The Post's reviewer described as a "hapless, protracted gaffe."
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Should we call the hapless storyteller an anecdope?
Word Fugitives 2008
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Should we call the hapless storyteller an anecdope?
Word Fugitives 2008
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The government – that is, the hapless FDIC – puts up 85 per cent of $5 million to buy this – namely, $4,250,000.
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They also miss that it isn't "just like" their partisan foes calling the hapless Dubya "Chimpy McHitlerBurton".
Today's blogging has a theme... I see. Ann Althouse 2009
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From ‘cowboy up’ to ‘lawyer up,’ Bush is a man for whom the word hapless is effusive praise.
myth17 commented on the word hapless
Olymic is a mockery of hapless players.
August 4, 2012