Ser un negado para ...

[aleCcowaN]

I've found dictionaries to be imprecise, when not plain wrong about the term "negado".

Ser un negado / ser un trabajador negado do mean to be skill-less or unskillful. It means to have no talent or skill.

But "ser un negado para..." just means not being gifted or even average for some specific activity. It's use is pretty colloquial. Some uneducated people would replace negado by torpe, because they are only used to skills of the physical kind. Negado covers any physical or intellectual activity.

Is there some equivalent in English for "ser un negado para..." other than those all-encompassing unforgiving highly wrong "hopeless, useless, a dead loss" I've found?

Just think negado is meant to work by subtraction, that means some lack of specific talents caught our attention just among the whole set of abilities the person has. To be clear, this example "tiene buena entonación, buena potencia, pero cuando se trata de ritmo, es un negado" (my approximate translation: "he's got good pitch, a powerful voice, but when it comes to rhythm, he's really wanting") to depict a person who won't succeed in the music industry.

"Es un negado para todo" is an elaborated work-around to soften the blow and say someone is useless.