schlep

Edit

Pronunciations

schlep (SHLEP) listen

Record a Pronunciation

Definitions

  • v. To travel from one place to another when one would prefer not to.

  • n. An annoyingly long journey.

  • v. To carry, lug.

Example Sentences

  • "Why would you schlep all of that stuff?"

  • "I shlepped all the way to the Valley for this?!?"

    Listen to recordings of this sentence: ( Recording 1)

  • "I thought about going to the exhibit, but it was just too long a shlep."

Record a Sentence

Languages of Origin

  • Yiddish

Etymology

  • שלעפּן shlepn 'pull, carry, lug' (verbal stem is שלעפּ shlep)

      • Who Uses This

      • Jews: Jews of diverse religious backgrounds and organizational involvements
      • Non-Jews: (words that have spread outside of Jewish networks)

      Regions

      • North America
      • Great Britain
      • South Africa
      • Australia / New Zealand

      Dictionaries

      • The New Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten and Lawrence Bush (New York, 2003[1968]).
      • Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America, by Sol Steinmetz (Tuscaloosa, 1986).
      • The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words, by Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, (Philadelphia, 2001).
      • Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish, by Chaim Weiser (Northvale, 1995).
      • View More

      Alternative Spellings

      shlep, shlepp

Notes

  • In Yiddish, shlepn can be transitive (with an object) or intransitive (with a reflexive pronoun zikh), but it can't be intransitive without the reflexive pronoun. In English, the bare form schlep can be both transitive and intransitive.

    See also shlepper.

Edit     Something missing from this entry? Inaccurate? Feel free to suggest an edit.