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The meaning of “can’t help doing something”

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“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?!

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Comments

  2. 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)

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

  3. 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.

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

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

  8. 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