Loserville

English

Etymology

From loser +‎ -ville.

Pronunciation

Audio (US): (file)

Proper noun

Loserville

(slang, often derogatory or humorous) A metaphorical town or city inhabited by losers, used to describe a real place, situation or person perceived as unsuccessful, unappealing or lacking social standing. [from 20th c.]
- 1970, Eric Berne, “Why People Play Games”, in Sex in Human Loving, New York: Simon & Schuster, page 191:
  By using their sexuality for bait as well as for pleasure, game players can satisfy both their hangups and their desires and thus keep themselves reasonably contented—on their way to lonely Loserville.
- 1997 May, James Wolcott, “When They Were Kings”, in Vanity Fair‎^[1], number 441, page 87:
  The movie, funny but acrid (burnt around the edges), has also spawned a spin-off book, a Swingers manual. Favreau plays Mike, a shlub strictly from Loserville who mopes over an old girlfriend and gets nowhere fast as an actor in Hollywood.
- 2002 February 5, Jim Pignatiello, “Diary of a madman”, in The Massachusetts Daily Collegian‎^[2], volume CVIII, number 74, page 9:
  Boston has ended a 16-year run of being Loserville. It still hasn't sunken in. I don't know how long it will take.
- 2003 January, Kim Masters, “Who Won In Hollywood This Year, who lost, and who didn't know there was a game”, in Esquire‎^[3], page 42:
  WINNER OF THE YEAR: Leslie Moonves. The CEO of CBS has put the network back on track and kicked off a franchise with Law & Order potential with the expanded CSI. He lost Joe Abruzzese, his head of sales, to Discovery, a highprofile defection that prompted an executive at a rival network to observe, "Les and male employees don't always get alongso well." But Moonves has moved CBS from loserville to having the largest audience in TV—and even to the verge of hipness.
- 2005, Roberta Hamilton, “Representation and Subjectivity” (chapter 6), in Gendering the Vertical Mosaic: Femenist Perpectives on Canadian Society, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, page 150:
  To be a smart girl was to write yourself a one-way ticket to Loserville—population you.