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
-
Carting around unhappy campers in 100-degree weather and squeezing work into a shorter window is not exactly being poolside with a marg.—
Abby McCloskey,
Twin Cities,
4 June 2026
-
Mansfield city hall a point of contention Melissa Perez, who ultimately lost to Simmons in last year’s council race, is one of those unhappy with Mansfield’s leadership and its direction.—
Matthew Adams,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
4 June 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
-
Caitlin Clark was part of another disastrous collapse on Saturday night, as the Indiana Fever blew a double-digit lead to the New York Liberty.—
Jackson Thompson OutKick,
FOXNews.com,
7 June 2026
-
At that pace, even a tiny micrometeoroid has the ability to impart a significant kinetic blow upon striking a spacecraft en route to the moon, with potentially disastrous results for the astronaut crew inside.—
Anthony Wood,
Space.com,
7 June 2026
Adjective
-
France were perhaps unlucky to go out in the competition’s groups (not helped by the two-week boat journey across the Atlantic) but the teams that made the final, Uruguay and Argentina, were the best at the tournament.—
Will Jeanes,
New York Times,
5 June 2026
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But then again, a body of land might be unlucky in its neighbors, just as a person might find oneself in the wrong place at the wrong time.—
Rachel Vorona Cote,
Vulture,
2 June 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 11 Jun. 2026.
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