Hapless

English

Adjective

Hapless (comparative more Hapless, superlative most Hapless)

1. Very unlucky; ill-fated.
   • 1826, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man, ch. 9:

     We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height of the tower of San Marco.

   • 1914, John Galsworthy, The Mob, act 1:

     My dear friend, are you to become that hapless kind of outcast, a champion of lost causes?

   • 2008, Harriet Barovick, "Detroit The Lost Season," Time, 31 Dec.:

     The hapless squad, which was outscored 517-268 in 2008, became the first in league history to go 0-16.

• For more examples of the usage of this term see the citations page.

Synonyms for Hapless

unfortunate, miserable, ill-fated, luckless, unlucky, unhappy.

Antonyms for Hapless

fortunate, lucky, successful, fortuitous, favored, happy, prosperous, flourishing, well-off.

Derived terms

• haplessly
• haplessness

Thesaurus

badly off, depressed, dire, donsie, doomful, evil-starred, fatal, fortuneless, funest, ill off, ill-fated, ill-starred, in adverse circumstances, inauspicious, infelicitous, luckless, miserable, ominous, out of luck, planet-struck, sad, short of luck, star-crossed, unblessed, underprivileged, unfortunate, unhappy, unlucky, unprosperous, unprovidential, untoward, woeful, wretched

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

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Etymology

hap

Translations

very unlucky; ill-fated

Finnish: onneton (fi), kovaonninen (fi), epäonninen (fi) German: unglückselig (de)

Hungarian: balsorsú (hu)

Anagrams

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