What is helpless

These neo-utilitarians1 treated agents as nearly helpless bystanders in a world they construed as described adequately by reference only to its structural forces. The heroine has an accident that renders her helpless and transforms her status on the instant from mistress to victim. There is no script, the garden flows constantly according to the natural law which audiences are also helpless to obey.

As such, discourses of ' helpless victims ' could enable women quietly but persistently to undermine traditional expectations and make political gains. She describes the overly entrenched characterizations of sopranos as helpless and tenors as vulnerable and romantic.

So sat the white man, at the foot of the pine, blind and helpless. Such attributions can make the patient feel helpless and hopeless to exer t control or make life changes, except by taking medications. This street child ' industry ' generates a mythical stereotype of hungry, helpless orphans at the mercy of death squads.

Youths in the third group will feel both less helpless and less guilty than those in the first two groups. For fate, which could become bearable only by being made intelligible, remains in force unaufgehoben ; we remain helpless points in the midst of infinity. If petitioners themselves did not deserve the secretary-general's benevolence, surely their innocent and helpless children did. As its potentially humiliating nature, the fact that it makes you helpless , and its association with the "precarious" all suggest, tickling renders the tickled powerless.

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors. Translations of helpless in Chinese Traditional. See more. Need a translator?

Translator tool. What is the pronunciation of helpless? Browse helpfully. Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Definition of helpless. Other Words from helpless helplessly adverb. Examples of helpless in a Sentence The civilians were helpless against their attackers. Firefighters were helpless against the blaze.

I feel helpless. Isn't there anything I can do? The crowd was helpless with laughter. He was helpless with rage. Recent Examples on the Web Feeling helpless , the two went home to figure out what to do next. First Known Use of helpless before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1. History and Etymology for helpless see help entry 1.

Learn More About helpless. To respect their wishes, I sat in the parched grass and waited, feeling helpless. Looking at that newspaper in the middle of the American desert, I wondered whether it was now my turn to know familial loss and feel helpless.

He saves the helpless from burning buildings and puppies from untimely deaths. I feel helpless at moments because I do not know how to help the people who lost their families and friends. At the stage when you are a helpless baby, Mom is, literally, everything. The fingers of all the clocks in the house were revolving with the most extraordinary rapidity--she was helpless.

She was helpless , because she had said nothing all day of her appointment, and because Janet had not mentioned it either.