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say it: HA-pluhs
hapless is an adjective meaning "deserving or inciting pity". It is pronounced /ˈhæpləs/ — HA-pluhs. It carries one recorded sense.
deserving or inciting pity
“a hapless victim”
“miserable victims of war”
“the shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic”
“piteous appeals for help”
“pitiable homeless children”
“a pitiful fate”
“Oh, you poor thing”
“his poor distorted limbs”
“a wretched life”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for hapless come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.