schlemiel

schlemiel

slang A bumbling, inept, incompetent person; someone who always tends to fail or do things wrong. From Yiddish. What a bunch of schlemiels! First they get my order wrong, then they send it to the wrong address, and now they're trying to refund me the wrong amount of money! Jeff is managing the project? That schlemiel couldn't manage his own sock drawer.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

schlemiel

and schlemihl and shlemiel (ʃləˈmil)
n. a gullible person; a loser. (From Hebrew Shelumiel via Yiddish.) See if you can get that schlemiel to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • schlemihl
  • shlemiel
  • shmendrick
  • schmendrick
  • fish
  • schtoonk
  • schtunk
  • jack-off
  • klutz
  • klotz
References in periodicals archive
Although the schlemiel and schlimazel of traditional Jewish humor would continue to reproduce American versions and characters as set forth by Cohen and Wisse, a new form of Jewish humor would also be necessary to reflect the new world realities of a Jewish culture that was increasingly assimilated, empowered, and intermarried.
"Philip Roth: The Schlemiel as Fictional Autobiographer." The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in Yiddish and American Jewish Fiction.
Arendt's four types are the schlemiel, the political rebel, the suspect and the man of goodwill.
A curious Yiddish-language prologue set in a Polish shtetl establishes a framework in which vigorous disputation and discernment of divine intent are among life's requisites, and so it remains, as Larry, the downtrodden schlemiel and once and future outcast, shuffles among multiple rabbis and lawyers in an attempt to make sense of what is happening to him.
Statelessness was characterized as "repugnant to the desired principle that every person 'belong,' as a citizen to one of the family of nations." (27) Since Adelbert von Chamisso's work, Peter Schlemiel, the issue of a man without a country has been seen as dangerous.
Such hypocrisy is depicted in Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist: Okhela, the white liberal pseudo-revolutionary group that sends Calaska on a "schlemiel assignment", does not support the African National Congress, the only authentic Revolutionary vanguard against apartheid.
As for Shlomoh, the PhD student from Columbia College, he is unfit for Adele because of his Melamid and schlemiel postures.
Halldorson reminds us early on that Pynchon's shabby schlemiel, which has become the dominant manifestation of contemporary American literary heroes, need not be the last word.
SCHLEMIEL - (See above) SCHMALTZ - Sickly-sweet (Although literal translation is 'chicken fat').
Schlemiel that he was; under the chuppa--three times it took to crush the wine glass." She paws the ground like a horse.
But, as also occurs in Bellow, the consciousness of the schlemiel makes up the center of Weir's novel.
In his various plots and characterizations, hiding behind the safety of the mask of a schlemiel, effeminate personality, he attempts to elevate his masculine status through female conquests, thereby proving himself as a successful player in the patriarchal game of male-male dominance.