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HAPLESS
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Dictionary entry overview: What does hapless mean?
• HAPLESS (adjective)
The adjective HAPLESS has 1 sense:
1. deserving or inciting pity
Familiarity information: HAPLESS used as an adjective is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Deserving or inciting pity
Synonyms:
hapless; miserable; misfortunate; pathetic; piteous; pitiable; pitiful; poor; wretched
Context example:
a wretched life
Similar:
unfortunate (not favored by fortune; marked or accompanied by or resulting in ill fortune)
Context examples
And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
How long is it since there has been peace in my hapless country?
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I told her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself, and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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