Word.ws English Dictionary

schlub

/ʃlʌb/

schlub noun: a person who is clumsy, oafish, socially awkward, unattractive or unkempt.

Noun

schlub (plural schlubs)

  1. (Jewish, New-York-City, derogatory, informal, slang) A person who is clumsy, oafish, socially awkward, unattractive or unkempt.
    • It wasn’t sufficient for Mother to use the rolling pin on that hapless brother of mine; she’d also call him Zlob, or Cham, another Polish term for an awkward peasant, something that a son of a nice Jewish family should never be.2000, Frank Stiffel, The Oxymoron Factor – Franek: Stranger in My Land, Viking, →ISBN
    • “Do you want me to go in for a quick snoop and poop?” “No. You cannot go. They will sense you. No, we need a mortal. A human. A common schlub. A nobody. Someone whose personality is like a eunuch. Do you know?” “Okay, I'm gonna go. I'll go. All right? I'll go.”2020 June 3, William Meny, “Witches” (5:14 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 2, episode 9, spoken by Nadja (Natasia Demetriou)

Forms of schlub

pluralschlubs
alternative formschlob
alternative formshlub
alternative formshlubb

Origin of schlub

From Yiddish זשלאָב (zhlob, “goyish bumpkin, redneck”), derived from Polish żłób (“manger, trough; furrow, large groove in the soil”). Compare Russian жлоб (žlob). Originated in Eastern Europe as part of klezmer musician cant (Klezmer-loshn). In its original sense, the word only applied to non-Jewish males. Strom (2002) lists "zhlobukhe-elzet" as a synonym, "zhlobevke" and "zlobike" (זלאָביקע) as female counterparts. The precise nature of the semantic leap from "manger, crib" to "boorish goy" remains unclear. In any case, by the year 1869, it had become common enough to be included in a Russian-Yiddish dictionary published in Zhytomyr. Jewish immigrants brought the word to the United States, where it is best known under the form schlub. False cognate of English slob.

Words formed from schlub

Questions about schlub

What does schlub mean?
Schlub means a person who is clumsy, oafish, socially awkward, unattractive or unkempt.
What part of speech is schlub?
Schlub is a noun.
How do you pronounce schlub?
Schlub is pronounced /ʃlʌb/.
What is the plural of schlub?
The plural of schlub is schlubs.

Words near schlub in the dictionary

  1. Schlotterbeck
  2. Schlotterbecks
  3. Schlotts
  4. Schlotz
  5. schls.
  6. schlub
  7. schlubbier
  8. schlubbiest
  9. schlubbiness
  10. schlubby
  11. schlubs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: schlub (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-schlub.wav.

Cite this entry: “schlub.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/schlub. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.