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”), 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.

• helplessly
• helplessness

• “helpless”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “helpless”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.