sad sack
English · Thesaurus
AI In plain words
Writing a short explanation…
Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.
sad sack
Where it comes from
US 1920s. Popularized by Sad Sack, a cartoon character and eponymous comic strip published originally June 1942 in Yank, the Army Weekly, a US Army publication for soldiers, and later syndicated in the US 1940s and 1950s. Presumably from vulgar “sad sack of shit” as cartoonist Sgt. George Baker said he took it from a “longer phrase, of a derogatory nature”. The term originally referred to a well-meaning but inept soldier.
noun sad sacks · sadsack
- An incompetent or inept person. One law enforcement official played down Mr. Defreitas’s ability to carry out an attack, calling him “a sad sack” and “not a Grade A terrorist.”
- A perennial failure or victim of misfortune. “Super Sad” takes as its Romeo and Juliet, its Tristan and Iseult, a middle-aged sad sack named Lenny Abramov and a much younger beauty named Eunice Park.
Talk about this word "sad sack." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/sad%20sack. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. sad sack. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/sad%20sack "sad sack." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/sad%20sack.Cite this
@misc{sad_sack_2026,
title = {sad sack},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/sad%20sack},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
