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schlep

verb
/ʃlɛp/

Etymology

From Yiddish שלעפּן (shlepn, “to drag”), from Middle High German slepen, from Middle Low German slêpen, from or related to Old High German sleifen (“to drag”) and slifan (“to slip”), from Proto-West Germanic *sleupan. Compare German schleppen (“to haul”) and its inherited doublet schleifen (“to drag”), Dutch slepen (“to drag”), Danish slæbe (“to haul”).

  1. derived from *sleupan✻
  2. derived from sleifen
  3. derived from slêpen
  4. derived from slepen
  5. derived from שלעפּן

Definitions

  1. To carry, drag, or lug.

    • I'm exhausted after schlepping those packages around all day.
    • Queen Elizabeth will schlep along 95 pieces of baggage on her trip here.
    • Yet what does the universe do to me? It schleps me to Sherwood Forest—and a Sherwood Forest like spotlessly sans Kevin Costner, no less—and then schleps me to your house, then schleps me to God—and I do mean God—knows where, […]

  2. To go, as on an errand

    To go, as on an errand; to carry out a task.

    • I schlepped down to the store for some milk.
    • 'I've schlepped all over town trying to find you.' Her tone was almost scolding as she stepped forward and grabbed her daughter in an elaborate hug.

  3. To act in a slovenly, lazy, or sloppy manner.

    • I just schlepped around the house on Sunday.
  4. ›+ 4 more definitions

    1. A long or burdensome journey.

      • Sure you can go across town to get that, but it'd be a schlep.
      • The walk was a schlep, but it was a schlep Wallace and I did together. I was singing the song about the letters of the alphabet and about alligators and balloons from the Maurice Sendak book that Carole King put to music.

    2. A boring person, a drag

      A boring person, a drag; a good-for-nothing person.

      • The shocking thing was that he was forty and still chasing girls, still a schlep who was obviously stuck in his adolescent pursuit of sex.

    3. A sloppy or slovenly person.

    4. A “pull” or influence.

      • He must have had a lot of schlep to get such good seats.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for schlep. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA