Definition of Hapless

hapless (adjective) - deserving or inciting pity; ; ; - Galsworthy

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How can hapless be used in a sentence?

  1. Should we call the hapless storyteller an anecdope?

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  2. "I think that I have this 'hapless' thing going for me," she told me.

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  3. Here's how 'hapless' India could still sneak into the ICC T20 WC semis

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  4. "hapless"; and asked, "How much longer can she possibly remain in office?"

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  5. James always seemed like a very sweet guy, kind of hapless and overwhelmed.

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  6. The I.N.S. is similarly inept ( "hapless" is Mr. Brill's adjective of choice).

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  7. Bernard Keane's description of Brendan Nelson as "hapless" is an understatement.

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  8. Robbie Keane who produced one of the misses of the season and was described as "hapless".

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  9. How about this one - his supporters have a tendency to call the people of the south "hapless".

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  10. Everyone's attention would be focused on that boy, his hapless mother, and the doctor who'd committed the fatal screw-up.

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  11. Sometimes, the instructor is the kind of hapless individual who often teaches high school health, do you know what I mean?

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  12. Comedian Will Forte, perhaps best known as the hapless "MacGyver" clone, won't be back for the coming season of "Saturday Night Live."

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  13. Meanwhile Newcastles season is going into freefall, as they lost 3-1 to West Ham, with what can only be described as a hapless performance.

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  14. That poor guy is a hapless dweeb standing in line, absorbed in his phone screen and oblivious to the mounting impatience of those around him.

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  15. No, the fact was that Flashy five years on (seen at his worst, mind, flat on his back and beat, and now a hapless invalid) no longer aroused her amorous interest.

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  16. This time it was Contessa Brewer, who Rush called "hapless" and criticized her for reporting on the GOP "stall tactics" on display in the Senate to slow down the bill.

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  17. The Obama "peace" alternative to George Bush and John McCain continues the American occupation of Iraq, with mercenaries upholding a hapless "government" instead of troops.

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  18. Before the Twins moved here, they were the Washington Senators, a team usually described with the epithet "hapless," as they sat year after year at the bottom of the league.

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  19. Fox Nation highlighted attacks on "hapless" Napolitano who shouldn't "remain in office." article under the headline, "Words NOT in Napolitano Op-ed: War, Islam, Yemen, Nigeria."

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  20. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless victims of misdirected vengeance.

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  21. He's now within striking distance of the Colorado governor's mansion, having launched an improbable third-party bid against a hapless Republican candidate and an establishment Democrat.

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  22. Grant and B.oadfoot and J.B. Hickok and Raglan and God knew who else along the way, all urging hapless Flashy into the soup by blackmail and brute force, and nothing to be done about it.

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  23. Stiller, best known as the hapless comic lead in movies such as There's Something About Mary and Meet The Parents, dropped 15 pounds (7kg) and his penchant for easy laughs to play the man-child Greenberg.

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  24. Stiller, best known as the hapless comic lead in movies such as "There's Something About Mary" and "Meet The Parents", dropped 15 pounds (seven kilogrammes) and his penchant for easy laughs to play the man-child Greenberg.

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  25. The reporters implied that a mid-April Loop column -- the one dubbing him "the biggest loser" at President Obama's nuclear summit and referring to him as "hapless" and "increasingly loopy" -- somehow hastened his departure.

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  26. The highlight of her reign of terror: The now-infamous "Saving Private Ryan" interpretive dance, part of a longer sequence, assembled to celebrate nominated film scores, which The Post's reviewer described as a "hapless, protracted gaffe."

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  27. Arguably, it could fall in the fifth century, after the Romans left Britannia to its hapless Celtic-and Germanic-speakers the latter, left in charge to cope with unraveling Roman rule, were all too aware that chaos was brewing in the empire.

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  28. Like her and many others of our generation, I knew all the old gang pretty well but have met only a handful of today's lot, Maginnes, the Attwoods, Hanna, Dallat, Ritchie, McGrady, McDonnell and yes the "hapless" - (unkind and overstated) - Durkan.

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  29. Chapter 62 consists of a single word, "hapless" - the only word Orion's abridger cut from the chapter, trimming a 105-word sentence to 104; the book's first sentence is "methodically"; the final hunt for the white whale dissolves into pure punctuation.

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  30. The practical political effect of the Clinton contretemps is simple: Meek, already struggling badly for any traction in the race (polling suggests that his support runs in the high teens) looks hapless and hopeless at a time when voters want the exact opposite.

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  31. I figured this for a rape, and I think Allie did too, from the way she stood and grinned, anticipating the vicious game she could play with this hapless Discard, but he took one quick step forward, knife glittering in sudden starlight as he slashed at her throat.

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  32. I'm not sure it's fair to call the walkers "hapless" in this case, since they're just doing what they're supposed to be doing, while the "fixerati" racing their Cinelli x MASH "collabo bikes" around Williamsburg to fund their cheap dates are arguably the "hapless" ones.

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  33. Given that Virginia entered last weekend without an ACC win in its previous nine conference games and that the Cavaliers had defeated only a pair of 1-AA teams and one hapless 1-A squad this season, it's understandable why Miami might not have been very amped up for that game.

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  34. June 15, 2007 | 11: 25 a.m. Friday's New York Post takes an unsanitary swipe at Mario Batali's Spotted Pig, citing the eatery's failing health inspection score of 34 back in May -- perhaps in retaliation for Mr. Batali's earlier dig on the Post's "hapless" food writer Braden Keil?

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  35. He describes the outcry against the Prince of Wales as outrageous, and one has to agree that whatever the faults of the future King Edward VII, he hardly deserved the storm which burst over his hapless head from a press which knew a ripe scandal when it saw one, and was only too glad of a royal scapegoat.

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  36. One thing was sure: I was implicated up to the neck, and as I knelt there sweating my imagination was picturing Willem out yonder, full of spite and sin, disposing of the hapless sentry, humouring the lock of the secret door, stealing up the secret stair knife in hand to the room where his royal victim was asleep ... or dead already?

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  37. Brian Ames's stories are reminiscent of both Hemingway and Raymond Carver, but where Hemingway's characters are stoically going about the business of living up to their own self-images of masculinity, and Carver's characters struggle to live with their failures as men, Ames's male protagonists in Eighty-Sixed (Word Riot Press, 2004) are, if not exactly "hapless," as the book's subtitle has it, comically unable to recognize their failures even while they're enduring them.

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Tips for Using hapless in a Sentence

You may have an easier time writing sentences with hapless if you know what words are likely to come before or after it, or simply what words are often found in the same sentence.

Frequent Predecessors

Words that often come before hapless in sentences. For example: "the hapless" or "a hapless"

  • the
  • a
  • his
  • of
  • and
  • their
  • this
  • these
  • that
  • some

Frequent Successors

Words that often come after hapless in sentences. For example: "hapless victims" or "hapless victim"

  • victims
  • victim
  • and
  • man
  • people
  • fate
  • young
  • youth
  • girl
  • woman

Associated Words

Words that aren't necessarily predecessors or successors, but are often found in the same sentence.

  • waiter
  • sidekick
  • adventurer
  • victim
  • barrister
  • protagonist
  • pirate
  • souls
  • warrior
  • creature

Alternate Definitions

  • hapless (adjective) - without hap or luck; luckless; unfortunate; unlucky; unhappy
A sentence using hapless