Word.ws English Dictionary

useless eater

useless eater noun: in the ideology of Nazi Germany, a person with a serious medical problem or disability, seen as requiring assistance from society but offering nothing in return.

Noun

useless eater (plural useless eaters)

  1. (Nazism) In the ideology of Nazi Germany, a person with a serious medical problem or disability, seen as requiring assistance from society but offering nothing in return.
    • Gerhard Kretschmar seemed perfectly to fit Hitler's idea of a “useless eater,” and when the KdF men informed him of the case, he leapt into action, summoning his personal physician, Karl Brandt, and ordering him to travel immediately to Leipzig to investigate.2021, Charlie English, The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler's War on Art, Random House, →ISBN, page 174

Forms of useless eater

pluraluseless eaters

Origin of useless eater

Calque of German unnützer Esser.

Questions about useless eater

What does useless eater mean?
Useless eater means in the ideology of Nazi Germany, a person with a serious medical problem or disability, seen as requiring assistance from society but offering nothing in return.
What part of speech is useless eater?
Useless eater is a noun.
What is the plural of useless eater?
The plural of useless eater is useless eaters.

Words near useless eater in the dictionary

  1. useless as teats on a boar hog
  2. useless as tits on a boar hog
  3. useless as tits on a bull
  4. useless class
  5. useless classes
  6. useless eater
  7. useless eaters
  8. useless lesbian
  9. useless lesbians
  10. uselesser
  11. uselessest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: useless eater (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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