loser
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English loser, losere, equivalent to lose + -er. In the sense of contemptible or worthless individual, perhaps an alteration of losel, which see.
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /luːzə(ɹ)/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - (General American) IPA(key): /luzɚ/
Audio (Mid-Atlantic US): (file)
- Rhymes: -uːzə(ɹ)
Noun
[edit]loser (plural losers)
- A person who loses; one who fails to win or thrive.
- Antonym: winner
- In a two-horse race there is always one winner and one loser.
- He was always a good loser.
- Something of poor quality.
- A person who is frequently unsuccessful in life.
- Synonym: failure
- That guy is a born loser!
- I'm a constant loser in love.
- (derogatory) A contemptible or unfashionable person.
- Synonyms: crumb, (archaic) losel, louse; see also Thesaurus:worthless person
- 2012, Frank Shamrock, Charles Fleming, “Fatherhood”, in Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter, Chicago Review Press, →ISBN, page 203:
- Mike didn't work but insisted that Jewell have a job. He would stay home and do whatever — smoke pot, screw around. He was a total loser, and she picked up the slack. That's around the time that Mom met her soon-to-be-next husband. He immediately moved in. He was a loser, too, with the same work ethic Mike had.
- One who or that which loses something, such as extra weight, car keys, etc.
- 1999, Larry Medsker, Lakhmi C. Jain, Recurrent Neural Networks: Design and Applications, →ISBN, page 192:
- Another way to speed search (in general) is to order or bias the hypothesis space based on some heuristic. Suppose you are a habitual car key loser and that you keep track of where your keys turn up after each search.
- 2004, Marianna S. Katona, Tales from the Berlin Wall: Recollections of Frequent Crossings, →ISBN:
- But a West German reporting a lost passport in East Berlin during the years of the Wall was treated to a criminal investigation, with the passport loser as the potential criminal.
- 2005, Maggie Greenwood-Robinson, The Biggest Loser: The Weight Loss Program to Transform Your Body, Health and Life, →ISBN:
- 2009, Jane Bryant Quinn, Making the Most of Your Money Now:
- You're counting on this insurance company to pay you a check many years in the future. But for some companies, disability coverage has been a money loser.
- 2010, Cutting Myself in Half: 150 Pounds Lost, One Byte at a Time, →ISBN, page 109:
- You have to think of yourself as an already amazing person who's hiding behind extra weight—a superhero in a disguise. If you follow the program, […] change the message from “I'm a big loser” to “I'm a big weight loser.”
- A losing proposition, one that is likely to lose or already has lost (such as a losing bet or, analogously, a predictably fruitless task or errand).
- 1988, Alice Taylor, To School Through the Fields: An Irish Country Childhood, Brandon Ltd, →ISBN, page 58:
- A new Guard came to town and decided to flex his muscles with George. We could have told him that he was on a loser but bright young men, then as now, know it all.
- 2001, Peter Svoboda, Beating the Casinos at Their Own Game[1], Square One Publishers, →ISBN, page 57:
- Hardway bets are losers if they are rolled in any other combination—called "soft" or "easy" numbers. For instance, a Hardway bet on a 4 is a loser if the dice show as 3 and 1. Betting on a Hard 8 is a loser if the dice are rolled as a 5 and 3, or a 6 and 2. Naturally, if the 7 is rolled before the Hardway number shows, the bet is also a loser.
- 2021 December 17, Eric Ralph, “SpaceX to replicate Starbase, build multiple Starship launch pads in Florida”, in Teslarati[2], retrieved 2022-08-07:
- In terms of betting on outcomes, Mars is a clear loser.
- (slang) A person convicted of a crime, especially more than once.
- He's a three-time loser doing twenty years.
Hyponyms
[edit]- (person who fails): wooden spooner, wooden spoonist (last-place finisher)
Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]person who fails to win
|
something of poor quality
person who is frequently unsuccessful in life
|
contemptible or unfashionable person
|
one who loses something
|
Anagrams
[edit]- Leros, lores, Roels, Roles, soler, sorel, slore, roles, Sorel, Soler, rôles, eorls, relos, lo-res, orles, Rosel, Osler
Dutch
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio: (file) - Hyphenation: lo‧ser
Noun
[edit]loser m (plural losers, diminutive losertje n)
Synonyms
[edit]French
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]loser m (plural losers)
German
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]loser
- comparative degree of lose
- inflection of lose:
Norwegian Bokmål
[edit]Noun
[edit]loser m
- indefinite plural of los
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms suffixed with -er (agent noun)
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/uːzə(ɹ)
- Rhymes:English/uːzə(ɹ)/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- English derogatory terms
- English terms with quotations
- English slang
- English agent nouns
- Dutch terms borrowed from English
- Dutch terms derived from English
- Dutch terms with audio pronunciation
- Dutch lemmas
- Dutch nouns
- Dutch nouns with plural in -s
- Dutch masculine nouns
- French terms borrowed from English
- French terms derived from English
- French 2-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns
- French colloquialisms
- German 2-syllable words
- German terms with IPA pronunciation
- German terms with audio pronunciation
- German non-lemma forms
- German comparative adjectives
- German adjective forms
- Norwegian Bokmål non-lemma forms
- Norwegian Bokmål noun forms