Schmo

//ʃməʊ// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A stupid, obnoxious, pathetic, or otherwise contemptible person; a schmuck. Jewish, US, slang

    "The poor schmo would immediately break down and confess that he did a lot of other bad things as well."

  2. 2
    Any average Joe; any Joe Schmoe. US, derogatory, humorous, informal

    "I'm just an average schmo"

  3. 3
    (Yiddish) a jerk wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
schmuckabsolute zeroairheadalcatotearseholeassbag

Example

More examples

"The poor schmo would immediately break down and confess that he did a lot of other bad things as well."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Yiddish, alteration of schmuck. Compare also Russian чмо (čmo, “jerk, schmuck”).

Etymology 2

See Joe Schmoe § Etymology; schmo in this sense may well be homonymic to schmo in the sense above.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.