helpless

From Middle English helples, from Old English *helplēas (“helpless”) from Proto-Germanic *helpōlausaz, equivalent to help +‎ -less. Compare Dutch hulpeloos (“helpless”), German hilflos (“helpless”), Danish hjælpeløs (“helpless”) and Swedish hjälplös (“helpless”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈhɛlplɪs/

• Audio (US):

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• Hyphenation: help‧less

helpless (comparative more helpless, superlative most helpless)

1. Unable to defend oneself.
   • 1995, Bryan Adams, Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?:

     Then when you find yourself lyin' helpless in her arms
     You know you really love a woman

   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: FTL Drive Codex entry:

     Rana Thanoptis: Are we good? Can I go?
     Shepard: You conducted brutal experiments on helpless test subjects. You helped Saren. You don't get to live.

2. Lacking help; powerless.
   • 1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 41:

     A gaoler struck him, pushing him back in place in the hopeless, helpless line of prisoners.

3. Unable to act without help; needing help; feeble.
4. Uncontrollable.

   a helpless urge

5. (obsolete) From which there is no possibility of being saved.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     For, while they fly that gulf's devouring jawes,
     They on the rock are rent and sunck in helplesse wawes.

Words with the suffix -less are often antonyms of those with -ful (such as with useless and useful). However, while helpful applies to something that provides help, helpless is not used to mean something that does not provide help. For that meaning, unhelpful is used instead.

• “helpless”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “helpless”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.