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You are here: Home / English lessons / The meaning of “can’t help doing something”

The meaning of “can’t help doing something”

21st July 2015 by Andrew 10 Comments

“can’t help doing something” is an interesting English expression. The form is:

can’t help + gerund (spoken form)
cannot help + gerund (more formal written form)

Here is an example of its use:

Sarah often shouts at me but I can’t help liking her.

shouting
This means that I can’t stop liking Sarah. It is not intentional, but I like her. Something is making me like her. I know that I should not like her (because she shouts at me), but I still continue to like her. I can’t help it.

So “can’t help doing something” means that we are not able to control something.

Here are some more examples:

Mother: “Mark, why do you always lose your keys?”
Mark: “I’m sorry but I can’t help it!”

When Mark says “I can’t help it!”, he means that it is not intentional, but he just can’t stop losing his keys. He can’t control the fact that he always loses his keys.

Here is another very common example of when to use “can’t help doing something”. In this example, Mark is on the bus and he hears a private conversation behind him that he would like to reply to:

Mark: “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying.”

“I couldn’t help overhearing” is a very polite way of telling somebody that you heard their private conversation, but it wasn’t intentional. In this example, we say “couldn’t” because it is the past tense. We couldn’t control the fact that we heard the conversation.

Here is a question for you all. – Elvis Presley sang a famous song with “Can’t help ______ _____ ______ (3 words)” in the title. What was the full title of the song?!

Filed Under: English lessons

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Safwat says

    13th December 2015 at 7:15 am

    I Cant Help Falling In Love

    Reply
  2. CATERINA says

    10th February 2016 at 12:04 am

    HELLO ANDREW,
    MY NAME IS CATERINA AND I AM ITALIAN.
    THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRECIUOS LESSONS. I THINK YOUR TEACHING METHODOLOGY IS EXCELLENT, I HAVE FOUND THE RIGHT WAY TO LEARN AND IMPROVE MY ENGLISH SKILLS IN A SIMPLE WAY. YOUR LESSONS ARE SHORT, INTERESTING AND DO NOT GET ME ANNOYED. THANK TOU AGAIN. CATERINA. (BARI- ITALY)

    Reply
    • ali says

      9th April 2018 at 10:48 pm

      YOU’RE WELCOME DEAR FRIEND ! BY THE WAY THIS IS ALI FROM IRAN . IT WOULD BE MY PLEASURE TO MEET YOU DEAR !

      Reply
  3. CATERINA says

    10th February 2016 at 12:27 am

    ACTUALLY I DO NOT KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER. I WLL TRY TO GUESS. THE ANSWER MIGHT BE: “I CANNOT HELP THINKING OF YOU” OR ” I CANNOT HELP SI GING IT AGAIN”. WHICH ONE MIGHT BE CORRECT, IF SO?
    CATERINA.

    Reply
    • Kaya says

      24th June 2016 at 9:42 am

      I think both of them are correct, the question might be if the second version are a common expression ?

      Reply
  4. Alameed Nasr says

    15th May 2016 at 8:28 pm

    Well Done, Thanks So Much.

    Reply
  5. alpa says

    19th June 2017 at 10:06 am

    It is sometimes very time consuming to go though motor way and i stuck in traffic but I cannot help to use other route

    Reply
  6. Naimo says

    17th June 2018 at 10:35 pm

    It’s useful, I learned alot. Thank you very much

    Reply
  7. Nomaan says

    29th July 2019 at 9:04 pm

    Is it correct?

    I couldn’t help sharing this picture.

    Reply
  8. Candido says

    25th October 2019 at 3:52 pm

    Amazing! I really liked the lesson. It was short, clear and straightforward. The comments were also interesting. Thus, I CAN’T HELP SCROLLING them.
    CANDIDO, MOZAMBIQUE

    Reply

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