as in unfortunate
having, prone to, or marked by bad luck
a luckless team with the worst record in the league
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Recent Examples of luckless
Any one of those locations could have allowed the heat of reentry to burn through the aluminum alloy walls of the spacecraft, killing any luckless crew that may have been inside, in much the kind of reentry breakup that doomed the shuttle Columbia and its seven-person crew in 2003.
—
Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 11 Apr. 2026
Vasyanovych plays Roman, a luckless director who’s out of work and trying to shoot his latest film in a country whose dwindling population is still traumatized by the war.
—Christopher Vourlias, Variety, 6 Sep. 2025
Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 11 Apr. 2026
Vasyanovych plays Roman, a luckless director who’s out of work and trying to shoot his latest film in a country whose dwindling population is still traumatized by the war.
—Christopher Vourlias, Variety, 6 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for luckless
Adjective
-
There’s no question that this unfortunate cocktail of corruption, inefficiency, and simple incompetence is holding the country back.—
Daniel Alarcón,
New Yorker,
4 June 2026
-
Unfortunately, going cold turkey off a central nervous system depressant like GHB has some pretty unfortunate side-effects.—
Bethy Squires,
Vulture,
3 June 2026
Adjective
-
What’s leaving one unhappy child at home compared to sending five hundred people home from the theatre happy?—
Deborah Treisman,
New Yorker,
1 June 2026
-
Shohei Ohtani almost became the most unhappy pitcher to ever be part of throwing a no-hitter.—
Bill Plunkett,
Oc Register,
28 May 2026
Adjective
-
Bargatze likes to be the butt of the joke, casting himself as the hapless but well-meaning dad who can barely keep track of his day-to-day needs.—
David Sims,
The Atlantic,
5 June 2026
-
Cherry plays Gary, a hapless, low-key type of guy who goes on a blind date, to avenge infidelity in his jaded long-term relationship, with the much younger, devil-may-care Ell, played by Borat breakout Maria Bakalova.—
Melanie Goodfellow,
Deadline,
4 June 2026
Adjective
-
The study, published on May 31, highlights an ongoing trend toward wildfires becoming increasingly extreme, costly, and disastrous — both economically and in lives lost.—
Doyle Rice,
USA Today,
31 May 2026
-
Leigh Ann, boy, so striking to hear the former first lady talk about that disastrous debate performance.—
NBC news,
NBC news,
31 May 2026
Adjective
-
The unlucky half is not random.—
Matt Rosenbaum,
Fortune,
29 May 2026
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The club has not merely been unlucky.—
Eddie Brown,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
29 May 2026
Adjective
-
Both her audition and her callback had fallen flat, but the company must have figured that casting an amateur from hard-luck Butte as Lucetta would make good press.—
Jonathan Franzen,
New Yorker,
1 June 2026
-
The Oilers went back to Connor Ingram in goal after a hard-luck overtime loss for Tristan Jarry in Game 4.—
Andrew Knoll,
Oc Register,
29 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Luckless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/luckless. Accessed 7 Jun. 2026.
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