schlemihl
Usage examples of "schlemihl".
Women had always happened to Profane the schlemihl like accidents: broken shoelaces, dropped dishes, pins in new shirts.
But a schlemihl, that was hardly a man: somebody who lies back and takes it from objects, like any passive woman.
He gave her that much but was mad with himself for going flabby enough to forget his schlemihl birthright.
From the pigeons in the park, from a girl picked up on any street, bad and good, a schlemihl like me takes and gives nothing back.
I had vaguely taken for granted that my friend was foredoomed to dispense with this graceful appendage, very much as Peter Schlemihl, in the tale, was condemned to have no shadow.
There was an old tradition that the students of necromancy or the black art, on reaching a certain pitch of proficiency, were obliged to run through a subterranean hall, where the devil literally caught the hindmost unless he sped so swiftly that the arch enemy could only seize his shadow, and in that case, a veritable Peter Schlemihl, he never cast a shadow afterwards!
Erasmus Spikher could provide the necessary shadow and Peter Schlemihl could reflect properly in a mirror.