Shlemiels

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who is inept and often makes foolish mistakes
2. Someone who consistently finds themselves in unfortunate situations due to their own clumsiness
3. An individual characterized by a lack of luck and poor decision-making that leads to comic misadventures

Etymology: "Shlemiels" is the plural of "shlemiel," a Yiddish word that entered English through Jewish immigrant communities, and the singular form, "shlemiel," is itself the centrepiece of a well-known folk tale. The word is borrowed from Yiddish, where it has roots in Hebrew, and its plural follows the Yiddish pattern of adding "-s" to a noun ending in a consonant. The figure of the shlemiel is most famously drawn in the folk tale of the hapless servant who, sent to fetch soup, spills it, then tries to repair the damage by making a bigger mistake, leaving him in a worse state than before. Yiddish storytellers and writers built a whole character type around this kind of bungling, and the word came to describe a person whose own clumsiness keeps leading them into trouble.

Synonyms: losers, fools, naïfs, dupes, INVALID