schlep
/ʃlɛp/
schlep verb: to carry, drag, or lug.
Verb
schlep (third-person singular simple present schleps, present participle schlepping, simple past and past participle schlepped)
- 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.1957 September 29, Paul Sann, New York Post
- To go, as on an errand; to carry out a task.
- I schlepped down to the store for some milk.
- You are not doing a lot of heavy thinking when you are schlepping; you are performing useful but perhaps menial labor, usually in the service of someone else. Schlepping is not very glorious, but nonetheless one should not underestimate its importance. First of all, just because you are schlepping...2005, Joe Marasco, The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Addison-Wesley, →ISBN
- To act in a slovenly, lazy, or sloppy manner.
- I just schlepped around the house on Sunday.
- Synonyms:
- schlump
Noun
schlep (plural schleps)
- 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.2011, Isabel Gillies, A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story, New York, N.Y.: Hyperion Books, →ISBN
- A boring person, a drag; a good-for-nothing person.
- 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!1976 January 26, William F. Winkler, “Letters”, in New York, volume 9, number 4, New York, N.Y.: NYM Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6
- 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.1983, Ed Ward, Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero, New York, N.Y.: Cherry Lane Books, →ISBN
- A sloppy or slovenly person.
- 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...2005, Nancy Gerber, Losing a Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving, Lanham, Md.: Hamilton Press, University Press of America, →ISBN, page 5
- A “pull” or influence.
- He must have had a lot of schlep to get such good seats.
Examples of schlep in a sentence
- 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, […]1993, George Alec Effinger, Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson, New York, N.Y.: Guild America Books, →ISBN, page 100:
- Schlepping is Yiddish for "toting or dragging around," and a quintessentially New York City kind of term.2006, Kyle Ezell, Retire Downtown: The Lifestyle Destination for Active Retirees and Empty Nesters, Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel...
- What people think, in our opinion, the what, should be viewed as a vehicle that schleps—scientific language—that schleps the how.2008, James Harding, Alpha Dogs: How Political Spin Became a Global Business, London: Atlantic Books, →ISBN:
- It’s impossible to find harmony in an outfit when you have to schlep five kilos of kit with you in order to manage the post-workout transformation.2017 November 16, Jo Ellison, “Help: the gym has turned us into slobs”, in Financial Times:
Synonyms of schlep
Forms of schlep
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | schleps |
| present participle | schlepping |
| past participle | schlepped |
| past | schlepped |
| alternative form | schlepp |
| alternative form | shlep |
| alternative form | shlepp |
| Noun | |
| plural | schleps |
Origin of schlep
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”).
Words formed from schlep
Words that rhyme with schlep
Questions about schlep
- What does schlep mean?
- Schlep means to carry, drag, or lug.
- How do you use schlep in a sentence?
- 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, […]
- What part of speech is schlep?
- Schlep can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce schlep?
- Schlep is pronounced /ʃlɛp/.
- What is the past tense of schlep?
- The past tense of schlep is schlepped.
Words near schlep in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: schlep (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-schlep.ogg.
Cite this entry: “schlep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/schlep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.