Word.ws English Dictionary

helplesse

helplesse is the obsolete spelling of helpless.

Meaning of helpless

Adjective

helpless (comparative more helpless, superlative most helpless)

  1. Unable to defend oneself.
    • Then when you find yourself lyin' helpless in her arms
      You know you really love a woman1995, Bryan Adams, Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?
  2. Lacking help; powerless.
    • A gaoler struck him, pushing him back in place in the hopeless, helpless line of prisoners.1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 41
  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.
    • For, while they fly that gulf's devouring jawes,
      They on the rock are rent and sunck in helplesse wawes.1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Forms of helplesse

comparativemore helplesse
superlativemost helplesse

Questions about helplesse

What is helplesse the obsolete spelling of?
Helplesse is the obsolete spelling of helpless.

Words near helplesse in the dictionary

  1. helpingly
  2. helpings
  3. helpless
  4. helplessdesk
  5. helplessdesks
  6. helplesse
  7. helplessly
  8. helplessness
  9. helplessnesses
  10. helpline
  11. helplines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: helplesse (page history and authors); helpless (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “helplesse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/helplesse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.