1) An unitelligent person

or

2) A knobbily cabbage

Originally a Hebrew word, popularized in English by the cartoonist Herb Gardner. A `sad sack,' a loser, a person who can't make any thing or any situation work right for him or her; unassertive, shy, timid. Reference: `The Joys of Yiddish,' by Leo Rosten. His definition is "An innocuous, ineffectual, weak, helpless or hapless unfortunate." There are other spellings also.

A nebbish is an ineffectual person, someone timid, submissive, weak, helpless or hapless, a nonentity. He's unlucky, but mainly because he’s a loser right through to the core.

It’s an adjective formed from one of the most characteristic of Yiddish words. It was originally "nebech". In Yiddish it was originally an interjection, roughly meaning “You poor thing!”. Americans had trouble saying this word when it first appeared in the English language at the end of the nineteenth century, and they changed it to nebbish, with nebbishy as the much less common adjective.

A man named Matt that earnestly pursues a goal to the point that it never comes to fruition. He often puts the cart before the horse and makes vast assumptions if a situation is going favorably for him thus sabotaging it. He often acts on self interest alone effectively alienating those who would be of assistance to him. Instead of taking action if a situation has gone south he simply spends resources he can't afford to comfort himself thus leaning too hard on those who are reluctantly there to assist him and further imperiling his situation.