Schlamassel

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chaotic muddle or an awkward, troublesome situation that is hard to escape from ; a clumsy, unlucky person who keeps causing trouble or failure
2. A confused, messy state of affairs that leaves someone in a difficult fix ; an inept or hapless individual who repeatedly bungles things
3. A jumbled, disastrous predicament that is hard to get out of ; a blundering, unfortunate person whose mistakes make everything worse

Etymology: "Schlamassel" is a Yiddish word meaning a series of misfortunes or a messy predicament, and it came into English from Yiddish, usually reaching English-speaking readers through Jewish immigrant communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its ultimate source is Hebrew "mazzal," meaning "luck" or "fortune," which is the word for a star or constellation in its sense of a star governing one's fate. The Yiddish compound "shlemazl" (an unlucky person, a born loser) and its relatives all grew out of that root. The sense of "bad luck" was originally fixed in a Hebrew phrase: "mazzal" could be used in a good sense, but the Yiddish-speaking world developed the prefix "schlim" (bad, crooked) attached to it, producing "schlimmazel," the state of having bad luck. Early on the word was used for a person who has bad luck, and the "misfortune" sense came later, so the modern word names the trouble itself rather than the unlucky one.

Synonyms: mess, fiasco, debacle, shambles

Antonyms: success