Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective informal Socially awkward, unattractive, clumsy, oafish.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

schlub +‎ -y

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Examples

  • Try feeling a little "schlubby" popping around the corner for a newspaper.

    Wine Shopping in San Francisco, Italian Style 2008

  • I do have "schlubby" skirts but they're still skirts.

    Another wrap-it-up dress - A Dress A Day 2007

  • In the film, which opened in theatres nationwide Friday, Carell plays Cal, a lovably schlubby fortysomething man with two kids whose long-time wife Emily Julianne Moore informs him that she has cheated on him and wants a divorce.

    ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love': Steve Carell Talks Divorce, Infidelity In New Film The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • But the aging fop cheats on her like mad, which gives hope to the schlubby, radiantly unsuccessful Hardy scholar played by American stage actor Bill Camp.

    'Tamara' And 'Funny Story': Uneasy, But Amusing 2010

  • In the film, which opened in theatres nationwide Friday, Carell plays Cal, a lovably schlubby fortysomething man with two kids whose long-time wife Emily Julianne Moore informs him that she has cheated on him and wants a divorce.

    ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love': Steve Carell Talks Divorce, Infidelity In New Film The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • But then I heard this conversation, between a schlubby MIT grad student and a woman I thought at first glance was Julia Stiles:

    What's Your Problem? 2009

  • While the movie told the vast majority of the story through the eyes of Arthur Dent, schlubby English nobody, as a way of giving the viewing audience a point-of-view they could relate to and gain familiarity with during the fantastical events of the story.

    Archive 2009-09-01 2009

  • But then I heard this conversation, between a schlubby MIT grad student and a woman I thought at first glance was Julia Stiles:

    What's Your Problem? 2009

  • While the movie told the vast majority of the story through the eyes of Arthur Dent, schlubby English nobody, as a way of giving the viewing audience a point-of-view they could relate to and gain familiarity with during the fantastical events of the story.

    Rabid Reads "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams 2009

  • He looks at her and sees a beautiful and vivacious young woman on her way to bigger and better things but he also sees in the mirror she represents a schlubby and dull no longer young man who is going nowhere fast and he hates it and sets out to shatter the mirror.

    Lance Mannion: 2009

Comments

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  • Talentless, unattractive, boorish.

    October 10, 2009

  • You can put your hero arbitrarily in tears to show he has depth; that gets done here. You can show him having revelations — college kids want to know who’s single; we should put a “relationship status” entry on Facebook! — and there’s some of that, too. For shorthand, you can make your intelligent hero schlubby, Jewish and unathletic. That historically reads as intelligence to movie audiences. You can also make him awkward with girls.

    "Looking for the Real Mark Zuckerberg" by Virginia Heffernan, The New York Times, December 10, 2010.

    December 11, 2010