help oneself

1. 1.

   abstain from doing; always used with a negative

   “I can't help myself--I have to smoke”

   “She could not help watching the sad spectacle”

   Synonymshelp

   Broaderrefrain

Questions about help oneself

What does help oneself mean?

help oneself means "abstain from doing; always used with a negative".

What is another word for help oneself?

Close synonyms include help. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is help oneself a common word?

help oneself is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.