usage - "I can't help it." Why help?


Why do we use the verb help in sentences such as the following to mean something like refrain from?



  • I try not to eat junk, but I can't help it.

  • I couldn't help laughing.

  • I can't help but admire her bravery.



Answer



Two of the OED’s definitions of help are relevant. Definition 11a is:



To remedy, obviate, prevent, cause to be otherwise. (With can, cannot, or some equivalent.) In earlier use usually in passive ‘it cannot be helped’, later in active with personal subject ‘I cannot help it’ = I cannot do anything to remedy or prevent it.



Definition 11b is:



To prevent oneself from, avoid, refrain from, forbear; to do otherwise than. (With can, cannot.)



It is true that in both senses help is often used with a negative word such as no, scarcely or hardly, but that is not always the case. For one thing, it can be used in a question, as in Trollope’s ‘How can I help it that I am not a man and able to work for my bread?’ It can also occur in an if clause following a negative, as it did in Hugh Walpole’s ‘I thought he should not offend the King if he could help it.’ In sense 11a, Pepys even used it without a negative at all: ‘One thing there is in his accounts that I fear may touch me; but I shall help it, I hope’


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