English Experts

The word Help

Here are some idioms we use to express the concept of help.

Let me give you a hand.

Helping, assisting someone with something, is a nice thing to do, and giving someone a hand means to help them.

“(Are you )In a jam?”

If you are in a jam, you require someone’s help to get out the

We can help someone out financially or try to get him out of a jam (a difficult or problematic situation).

“Help yourself!”

At a party the host may tell us to help ourselves (serve ourselves) to the buffet.

But help isn’t always meant in a positivie way.
The word help does not always mean to help someone (ajuda, assistir).

If someone says, “Get some help” in an unfriendly tone, they are implying that you need psychiatric help. It is an assertion that you are so imbalanced that you need to see a psychiatrist. Usually,they don’t really intend to objectively assess your actual mental state, but they are trying to insult you.

Speaking of not being crazy, the phrase “like crazy” does not refer to anyone’s mental state. The sentence,”The new software is selling like crazy,” means it is selling furiously, very much, fast.

I hope that helps!

See you,

Mary Ziller from USA

Autora: I'm Mary Ziller. I tutor ESL at the IHM Lteracy Center in Philadelphia. I lived a year in Brazil where I became certified to teach English as a Foreign language. Outros textos da autora.