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help

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help

[help]

Use help in a Sentence

–verb (used with object)

1.	to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist: He planned to help me with my work. Let me help you with those packages.

2.	to save; rescue; succor: Help me, I'm falling!

3.	to make easier or less difficult; contribute to; facilitate: The exercise of restraint is certain to help the achievement of peace.

4.	to be useful or profitable to: Her quick mind helped her career.

5.	to refrain from; avoid (usually prec. by can or cannot): He can't help doing it.

6.	to relieve or break the uniformity of: Small patches of bright color can help an otherwise dull interior.

7.	to relieve (someone) in need, sickness, pain, or distress.

8.	to remedy, stop, or prevent: Nothing will help my headache.

9.	to serve food to at table (usually fol. by to): Help her to salad.

10.	to serve or wait on (a customer), as in a store.

–verb (used without object)

11.	to give aid; be of service or advantage: Every little bit helps.

–noun

12.	the act of helping; aid or assistance; relief or succor.

13.	a person or thing that helps: She certainly is a help in an emergency.

14.	a hired helper; employee.

15.	a body of such helpers.

16.	a domestic servant or a farm laborer.

17.	means of remedying, stopping, or preventing: The thing is done, and there is no help for it now.

18.	Older Use. helping (def. 2).

–interjection

19.	(used as an exclamation to call for assistance or to attract attention.)

—Verb phrase

20.	help out, to assist in an effort; be of aid to: Her relatives helped out when she became ill.

—Idioms

21.	cannot or can't help but, to be unable to refrain from or avoid; be obliged to: Still, you can't help but admire her.

22.

help oneself to,

a.	to serve oneself; take a portion of: Help yourself to the cake.

b.	to take or use without asking permission; appropriate: They helped themselves to the farmer's apples. Help yourself to any of the books we're giving away.

23.	so help me, (used as a mild form of the oath “so help me God”) I am speaking the truth; on my honor: That's exactly what happened, so help me.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME helpen, OE helpan; c. G helfen

Related forms:

help⋅a⋅ble, adjective

Synonyms:
1. encourage, befriend; support, second, uphold, back, abet. Help, aid, assist, succor agree in the idea of furnishing another with something needed, esp. when the need comes at a particular time. Help implies furnishing anything that furthers one's efforts or relieves one's wants or necessities. Aid and assist, somewhat more formal, imply esp. a furthering or seconding of another's efforts. Aid implies a more active helping; assist implies less need and less help. To succor, still more formal and literary, is to give timely help and relief in difficulty or distress: Succor him in his hour of need. 3. further, promote, foster. 6. ameliorate. 7. alleviate, cure, heal. 12. support, backing.

Antonyms:
3, 11. hinder. 7. afflict. 13. hindrance.

Usage note:
21. Help but, in sentences like She's so clever you can't help but admire her, has been condemned by some as the ungrammatical version of cannot help admiring her, but the idiom is common in all kinds of speech and writing and can only be characterized as standard.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Link To help

help (hělp)

v. helped, help·ing, helps

v. tr.

To give assistance to; aid: I helped her find the book. He helped me into my coat.
To contribute to the furtherance of; promote.
To give relief to: help the needy.
To ease; relieve: medication to help your cold.
To change for the better; improve: A fresh coat of paint will help a scarred old table.
To refrain from; avoid or resist. Used with can or cannot: couldn't help laughing.
To wait on, as in a store or restaurant.

v. intr.
To be of service; give assistance.
n.

1. The act or an instance of helping.
2. Aid or assistance.
Relief; remedy.
One that helps: You've been a great help. A food processor is a help to the serious cook.
A person employed to help, especially a farm worker or domestic servant.
Such employees considered as a group. Often used with the.

[Middle English helpen, from Old English helpan.]

Synonyms: These verbs mean to contribute to the fulfillment of a need, the furtherance of an effort, or the achievement of a purpose or end. Help and aid, the most general, are frequently interchangeable: a medication that helps (or aids) the digestion.
Help, however, sometimes conveys a stronger suggestion of effectual action: I'll help you move the piano.
Assist usually implies making a secondary contribution or acting as a subordinate: Apprentices assisted the chef in preparing the banquet.
Succor refers to going to the relief of one in want, difficulty, or distress: "Mr. Harding thought . . . of the worn-out, aged men he had succored" (Anthony Trollope). See Also Synonyms at improve.

Usage Note: Many people commonly use help in the sense conveyed in the sentence Don't change it any more than you can help (that is, "any more than you have to"). Some grammarians condemn this usage on the grounds that help in this sense means "avoid" and therefore logically requires a negative. But the expression is a well-established idiom. See Usage Note at cannot.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

Help

Help\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Helped(Obs. imp. Holp, p. p. Holpen; p. pr. & vb. n. Helping.] [AS. helpan; akin to OS. helpan, D. helpen, G. helfen, OHG. helfan, Icel. hj[=a]lpa, Sw. hjelpa, Dan. hielpe, Goth. hilpan; cf. Lith. szelpti, and Skr. klp to be fitting.]

1. To furnish with strength or means for the successful performance of any action or the attainment of any object; to aid; to assist; as, to help a man in his work; to help one to remember; -- the following infinitive is commonly used without to; as, "Help me scale yon balcony." --Longfellow.

2. To furnish with the means of deliverance from trouble; as, to help one in distress; to help one out of prison. "God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk!" --Shak.

3. To furnish with relief, as in pain or disease; to be of avail against; -- sometimes with of before a word designating the pain or disease, and sometimes having such a word for the direct object. "To help him of his blindness." --Shak.

The true calamus helps coughs. --Gerarde.

4. To change for the better; to remedy.

Cease to lament for what thou canst not help. --Shak.

5. To prevent; to hinder; as, the evil approaches, and who can help it? --Swift.

6. To forbear; to avoid.

I can not help remarking the resemblance betwixt him and our author. --Pope.

7. To wait upon, as the guests at table, by carving and passing food.

To help forward, to assist in advancing.

To help off, to help to go or pass away, as time; to assist in removing. --Locke.

To help on, to forward; to promote by aid.

To help out, to aid, as in delivering from a difficulty, or to aid in completing a design or task.

The god of learning and of light Would want a god himself to help him out. --Swift.

To help over, to enable to surmount; as, to help one over an obstacle.

To help to, to supply with; to furnish with; as, to help one to soup.

To help up, to help (one) to get up; to assist in rising, as after a fall, and the like. "A man is well holp up that trusts to you." --Shak.

Syn: To aid; assist; succor; relieve; serve; support; sustain; befriend.

Usage: To Help, Aid, Assist. These words all agree in the idea of affording relief or support to a person under difficulties. Help turns attention especially to the source of relief. If I fall into a pit, I call for help; and he who helps me out does it by an act of his own. Aid turns attention to the other side, and supposes co["o]peration on the part of him who is relieved; as, he aided me in getting out of the pit; I got out by the aid of a ladder which he brought. Assist has a primary reference to relief afforded by a person who "stands by" in order to relieve. It denotes both help and aid. Thus, we say of a person who is weak, I assisted him upstairs, or, he mounted the stairs by my assistance. When help is used as a noun, it points less distinctively and exclusively to the source of relief, or, in other words, agrees more closely with aid. Thus we say, I got out of a pit by the help of my friend.

Help

Help\, v. i. To lend aid or assistance; to contribute strength or means; to avail or be of use; to assist.

A generous present helps to persuade, as well as an agreeable person. --Garth.

To help out, to lend aid; to bring a supply.

Help

Help\, n. [AS. help; akin to D. hulp, G. h["u]lfe, hilfe, Icel. hj[=a]lp, Sw. hjelp, Dan. hielp. See Help, v. t.]

1. Strength or means furnished toward promoting an object, or deliverance from difficulty or distress; aid; ^; also, the person or thing furnishing the aid; as, he gave me a help of fifty dollars.

Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. --Ps. lx. 11.

God is . . . a very present help in trouble. --Ps. xlvi. 1.

Virtue is a friend and a help to nature. --South.

2. Remedy; relief; as, there is no help for it.

3. A helper; one hired to help another; also, thew hole force of hired helpers in any business.

4. Specifically, a domestic servant, man or woman. [Local, U. S.]

Language Translation for : help

Spanish: ayudar,

German: helfen,

Japanese: 助ける

More Translations »

help

O.E. helpan (class III strong verb; past tense healp, pp. holpen), from P.Gmc. *khelpanan (cf. O.N. hjalpa, O.Fris. helpa, Du. helpen, Ger. helfen), from PIE base *kelb-/*kelp- "to help" (cf. Lith. selpiu "to support, help"). Sense of "serve someone with foot at table" (1688) is translated from Fr. servir "to help, stead, avail," and led to helping "portion of food" (1824). Use of help as euphemism for "servant" is Amer.Eng., 1645, tied up in notions of class and race.

"A domestic servant of American birth, and without negro blood in his or her veins ... is not a servant, but a 'help.' 'Help wanted,' is the common heading of advertisements in the North, when servants are required." [Chas. Mackay, "Life and Liberty in America," 1859].

The M.E. pp. holpen survives in biblical and U.S. dial. use.

HELP
1. DEA. A Language for industrial robots.
2. (Help Est un Lisp Paresseux - Help Is a Lazy Lisp). A lazy version of Scheme with strictness annotations, by Thomas Schiex .

help

In addition to the idioms beginning with help, also see can't help but; every little bit helps; not if one can help it; so help me.

HELP
Health Education Library for People

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