Other forms: helped, helping, helps
To help someone is to do part of the work so it is easier for them. You help a neighbour carry a sofa up the stairs, help a child with homework, help a stranger pick up dropped shopping.
Two patterns matter: help someone WITH something, and help someone DO something, since he helped me carry it and he helped me to carry it are both right and the shorter one is commoner. Help is also a noun, as in thanks for your help, and a shout on its own: Help! Can't help means cannot stop yourself, so I couldn't help laughing, never I couldn't help to laugh. Help yourself means take as much as you want. A helping is the food on your plate, and second helpings are the ones you go back for. Helpful and helpless are the adjectives, and helpless does not mean unhelpful; it means unable to do anything at all.
1verbhelpTo make something easier for someone by doing part of it or giving what they need.~33%
“Can you help me lift this to the top shelf?”
2verbsituationTo make a situation better.~16%
“Shouting at the machine will not help.”
3verbstopTo stop yourself doing something, used with can't or couldn't.~2%
“I couldn't help staring at his shoes.”
4nounactThe act of making something easier for someone.~33%
“Thanks for all your help this week.”
5nouneasierA person or thing that makes something easier.~16%
“A second pair of hands would be a real help.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Help has barely moved in a thousand years. Old English help, from Proto-Germanic *helpo, from a Proto-Indo-European root *kelb- or *kelp-, to help. Its cousins are still recognisable all over northern Europe: Dutch hulp, German Hilfe, Danish hjaelp, Swedish hjalp, Icelandic hjalp.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱelb-
Proto-Germanic
*helpō — help
Old English
help — help, aid, assistance, relief
Middle English
help
English, today
help
Built from
From Middle English help, from Old English help (“help, aid, assistance, relief”), from Proto-Germanic helpō (“help”), hilpiz, hulpiz, from Proto-Indo-European ḱelb-, ḱelp- (“to help”). Cognate with stq Hälpe (“help”), West Frisian help (“help”), cim hölfe (“help”), Dutch hulp (“help”), German Hilfe (“help, aid, assistance”), lb Hëllef (“help”), mhn hilf (“help”), wym hyłf (“help”), Yiddish הילף (“help”), Danish hjælp (“help”), Faroese and Icelandic hjálp (“help”), Norwegian Bokmål hjelp (“help”), Norwegian Nynorsk hjelp, hjølp (“help”), Swedish hjälp (“help”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA