Meaning of Schlep | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A long or burdensome journey.
   Jewish, New-York-City, informal, slang
2. A boring person, a drag; a good-for-nothing person.
   Jewish, New-York-City, informal, slang
3. A sloppy or slovenly person.
   Jewish, New-York-City, informal, slang
4. A “pull” or influence.
   Jewish, New-York-City, informal, slang

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“For every genuine, sincere, perceptive resident who is capable and willing to work and sacrifice, you've got 200-plus who are permanently classifiable as either hustlers, rip-off artists, freeloaders, ganefs, shleps, or out-and-out shmucks!”

“You dug Albert King. You notice his band is absolutely nothing. They were dead schleps, dead schleps playing behind him and Albert was the only one who really measured up to Albert's own sound. It was like they were old tired blues players and it was a drag. But Albert was exquisite.”

“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.”

“Economic scholars might assert that unscholarly, middle class schleps outside the field of economics have no authority to write essays that make such ignorant claims.”

“My father had class? I was completely taken aback. I had never heard my father described that way. To me, he was not a European gentleman but a schlep, someone who preferred chinos to gabardine, comfort to style. My mother used to say that if she hadn't made him go shopping, he would still be wearing the same ugly suits he wore in the fifties.”

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

CEFR level