helplessly
33
2.7
- adverb
- /ˈhɛlpləsli/
:
sin poder hacer nada
- You know, we've watched helplessly as fellow journalists, you know, have been very publicly executed.
- watch helplessly
- stand helplessly
- look on helplessly
If we let these Bantam buried phantoms master us as they reappear, we'll be swept back helplessly in the flood tide like pieces of flotsam, right?
- If we let these Bantam buried phantoms master us as they reappear, we'll be swept back helplessly in the flood tide like pieces of flotsam, right?
- Leaves flutter helplessly expose their veined undersides.
Examples
-
Police stood watching helplessly as rioters raced through home after home with flaming torches.
Academic text (2018) -
The dragons scattered helplessly, unable to counter Nettlebrand's immunity to their fire.
-
I watched as they all helplessly died.
-
I just watched helplessly as people around me were destroyed, one by one.
-
I'm supposed to sit by helplessly and watch my little girl suffer?
-
All they could do was sit helplessly and watch the madness unfold before them.
-
His feet remained rooted to the floor, his hands fiddling helplessly with the doorknob.
Fiction book (1990) -
A small boy watched helplessly as his father was killed by the pirate leader, the Evil Kabai Sengh.
-
As the guns of August unleashed in 1914, Aitken watched helplessly as friends like Winston Churchill found influential appointments.
Academic text (2005) -
I just watched helplessly as people around me were destroyed, one by one.
Synonyms
1
7.5
In a way that cannot change or stop something
Without being able to do anything to change what happens
Antonyms
How Able
261
3.6
3
3.8
83
3.0
1
6.3
33
2.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word helplessly is made from help + -less + -ly, where -less means 'without' and -ly makes it describe how something is done. A helpful way to remember it is 'without help' — so if someone acts helplessly, they are doing something but have no power to change the situation. That's why helplessly means doing something in a way that shows you cannot act or help yourself.