What's the difference between feckless and hapless?

Feckless


Definition:

  • (a.) Spiritless; weak; worthless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The euro elite insists it is representing the interests of Portuguese or Irish taxpayers who have to pick up the bill for bailing out the feckless Greeks – or will be enraged by any debt forgiveness when they have been forced to swallow similar medicine.
  • (2) In February last year the BBC was forced to apologise to the Mexican ambassador after a joke made by the three presenters that the nation's cars were like the people "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat".
  • (3) Feckless Tom Bertram is a haunter of seaside resorts.
  • (4) The right is very flexible on industrial action: in the 80s striking miners were characterised as violent and feckless, despite being unarmed against mounted police and arguably the opposite of feckless – battling to keep backbreaking jobs.
  • (5) Feckless in all other respects, Richard feels protective towards Walter, which is why he won't sleep with Patty.
  • (6) The targets of Karzai's often intemperate outbursts were equally frustrated, dubbing the president "feckless" and "unreliable", briefing that he was "paranoid" and possibly abusing prescription drugs.
  • (7) Rayner later said of her parents that "they were very young and very feckless".
  • (8) The problem, however, of grand multipara who are feckless, ignorant and of low social class, still remains.
  • (9) That the EU is seeking greater powers to steal the money of rich nations to deal with the feckless Spanish and Greeks.
  • (10) It’s not as easy for them as cutting benefits, which could simply be depicted as taking candy from obese babies and their feckless mothers.
  • (11) And on tax and capitalism in general, public opinion is, if anything, moving leftwards, as tax cheats and feckless bankers solidify into popular demons.
  • (12) Jesse James, a cold-blooded killer, lived a simple life: he murdered people, he robbed banks, he got shot in the back by feckless confederates, he died.
  • (13) The BBC has upheld complaints against Top Gear over Richard Hammond's comments that Mexicans are "lazy, feckless [and] flatulent".
  • (14) The bromance sub-genre suggests a perpendicular solution to similar issues: friendship replaces sex, and in the sharp Role Models , bromantically involved Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott also form surrogate parental bonds with feckless males-in-training Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb'e J Thompson .
  • (15) Their analysis – that the problem is worklessness – is wrong; their assumptions – that the poor are feckless – are wrong.
  • (16) He said: "It is utterly shocking and I hope that the ministers will take note of this and get hold of some of these feckless fathers, drag them off, put them in chains if necessary, make them work and make them pay back society for the cost of bringing up the children they chose to bring into this world."
  • (17) It was a stern lecture, naturally, but nothing like the old days when a performance that feckless would have seen a wedding set's worth of­ ­crockery smashed against the dressing-room walls.
  • (18) Clarkson previously maligning Mexicans as "lazy, feckless and flatulent", or making jokes about "black Muslim lesbians", or Sterling twice being fined by the department of justice for being a racist slumlord, didn't quite cut it.
  • (19) When Scotsman Harry Stanley was killed by police in the same year after leaving a London pub carrying a table leg and being mistaken for an Irishman with a sawn-off shotgun he was demonised as a feckless drunk.
  • (20) Coalitions involve compromises, but it is a shameful moment to see Britain's most pro-European party, and pro-European Tories such as Kenneth Clarke, trooping into the lobbies tonight in support of such a foolish, feckless and futile bill.

Hapless


Definition:

  • (a.) Without hap or luck; luckless; unfortunate; unlucky; unhappy; as, hapless youth; hapless maid.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) However, while he considers the stock undervalued, the hedge fund boss said the software firm had missed a string of opportunities under Ballmer's "Charlie Brown management", referring to the hapless star of the Peanuts cartoon strip.
  • (2) It’s all very well for Hopeless to make fun of me saying Brexit means Brexit,” said Hapless, haplessly.
  • (3) Spanish football fans’ habit of waving white hankies tends to be derisive, signifying that they wish a hapless manager to be put out of their club’s misery.
  • (4) It also suggests that the next assault on the hapless inmates of the Israeli-made prison is just a matter of time.
  • (5) It will also star Tony Hale, known for his hapless characters in Arrested Development and Veep, and Natasha Lyonne, currently enjoying a career renaissance for her role in Netflix series Orange is the New Black.
  • (6) All Hapless could really be clear about was that she couldn’t actually be clear about anything.
  • (7) The time has come for the world to get serious about resolving this conflict: if not for the sake of the hapless Syrian people, then at least for the sake of global security and stability.
  • (8) This was a relatively tidy Sunderland performance and for a while they even looked like marking their new manager’s debut with their first clean sheet of the campaign, but then that costly hapless streak resurfaced and they found themselves in the familiar position of ending a match with no points.
  • (9) However, he told the Voice of the Listener and Viewer autumn conference in London on Monday that he was saddened that since he resigned earlier this month Entwistle had been "written off by large sections of the press as some sort of hapless or inadequate figure", with "his reputation regularly trashed".
  • (10) Note also the part of the story that plays to Brown's alleged bullying side: his attempt to blame the incident on some hapless member of his own staff.
  • (11) It was she who refused to believe the Goan police's assertion that her daughter had merely drowned in an alcoholic, drug-induced stupor, one more hapless victim of Anjuna's dark underworld.
  • (12) Although a hapless England were behind at the interval Germany's control had not been absolute.
  • (13) In the future search for coalition partners, Merkel will be heavily reliant on the hapless foreign minister and Liberal Democrat leader Guido Westerwelle, while the revitalised Social Democrats and the ever-rising Greens can start dreaming again of the halcyon days under Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer.
  • (14) The fight ends with you stomping the last remaining vitality from the hapless construction worker's blood-squirting body.
  • (15) Japan’s hapless preparations for the 2020 Olympics have suffered another embarrassment after organisers decided to scrap the Games’ official logo amid accusations of plagiarism against designer Kenjiro Sano.
  • (16) Arthur had a hapless sidekick, Chester Drawers, who he’d humiliate roundly in front of an audience, then come off stage and double down on by hissing something like: “I’ve seen a monkey take a pie better than that!” Will May’s government soon be forced to undergo an emergency Borisectomy?
  • (17) A mere 34 seconds were on the clock at the beginning of the second half when Nacer Chadli was allowed to drift unchallenged from left to right before drilling a low shot past the hapless Jak Alnwick.
  • (18) Forty years on that's exoneration enough for the "hapless" troubadour Haffey.
  • (19) With Abrams having revived Star Trek's fortunes on the big screen (unless one asks hardcore Trekkies), most filmgoers are keenly anticipating a triptych of movies that could consign George Lucas's hapless prequel trilogy to a dustbin filled with the rotting remains of Jar Jar Binks and that guy with the cucumber-shaped forehead from Yoda's Jedi council.
  • (20) Guzmán went underground as Mexico descended into the abyss, boasting that he paid out $5m a month to corrupt officials, and making sudden, brazen appearances such as that in May 2005 at a restaurant in Nuevo Laredo, his enemy’s doorstep, when 40 diners found the doors suddenly locked by his gunmen to be told: “Don’t be alarmed, order whatever you want, and we’ll pay.” Another of his banquets in Mexico City was raided by the army – but too late, finding only four hapless members of the band paid to entertain Guzmán, who were arrested for possession of firearms.