5. supporter, advocate, adviser, patron, patronizer, backer, champion, endorser, upholder, sanctioner, approver, maintainer, sustainer; follower, disciple, partisan, disciple, devotee, sectary, votary; agent, promoter, furtherer, advancer, favorer; financer, funder, subsidizer, underwriter, angel, Inf. staker, Inf. grub-staker, Si. meal ticket; benefactor, benefactress, bene-fiter, friend in deed, Inf. fairy godmother; comforter, succorer, good Samaritan, ministering angel, friend in need.
helpful, adj. 1. useful, of use, practical, pragmatic, utilitarian, beneficial, advantageous, propitious, favorable, valuable, profitable, constructive, commodious, instrumental, conducive, contributory, contribu-tive; serviceable, servicing, of service, aidful, aiding, obliging, accommodative, accommodating, helping, available, at-hand, handy, convenient, well-disposed, well-affected; auxiliary, ancillary, subsidiary, accessory, attendant, adjuvant, adjunct, subservient, Obs. adjutory, Obs., Rare, adjutorious.
2. healthful, healthy, salubrious, salutary, edifying, wholesome, Inf. good for.
3. friendly, neighborly, cooperative, synergetic, coa-litional, collaborative, supportive; kind, sympathetic, benign, merciful, benevolent, beneficent, munificent, charitable, philanthropic.
helpless, adj. 1. weak, faint, feeble, infirm. Rare. imbecile; dependant, invalid, disabled, lame, crippled, hobbled, prostrate, laid-up, flat on one's back, laid-out, paralyzed, palsied, incurable; exhausted, debilitated, enervated, devitalized, worn-out, effete, spent, at the end of one's rope or tether, SI. wasted, SI. blown away.
2. outcast, abandoned, forsaken, exposed, deserted, neglected, done for; alone, forlorn, naked, desolate, destitute, adrift, guideless, friendless, fatherless, defenseless, resourceless, aidless, unaided.
3. impotent, powerless, strengthless, weaponless; unmanned, unnerved, unarmed; vulnerable, on the ropes, pregnable, expugnable, vincible, conquerable, unguarded, unprotected, unsupported, unfortified, open to attack, over a barrel.
4. confused, confounded, perplexed, bewildered, befuddled, baffled, mystified, nonplused, buffaloed, uncertain, at a loss, at sea, at the end of one's wits.
5. useless, worthless, inadequate, insufficient, inapt; incapable, incompetent, inept, inefficient, unendowed, unqualified, unfit; shiftless, irresponsible, unresourceful, without initiative; spineless, without backbone, sinewless; inane, fatuous, empty, barren, sterile.
helpmate, n. 1. aid or aide, assistant; companion. See helper (def. 1).
2. spouse, husband or wife, mate, partner, consort, common-law wife or husband, Inf. better half; married man, benedict, bridegroom, groom, Inf. hubbie, SI. old man, Archaic, goodman; married woman, wedded wife, bride, housewife, woman, lady, matron, Amer. Ind. squaw, wife of one's bosom, Law. feme, Law. feme covert, concubine, Inf. missis or missus, Inf. little woman, Hum. rib, SI. old lady or woman, Scot. Inf. wifey, Archaic, goodwife or goody; All Rhyming Slang, storm and strife, struggle and strife, trouble and strife, worry and strife, Rare, war and strife, Duchess of Fife, drum and fife, Hum. or Derog. joy of my life, Obs. bit of tripe, Obs. carving knife; (girl) mother of pearl, (missis) cheese and kisses, (missis) plates and dishes.
helter-skelter, adv. 1. pell-mell, hurry-scurry, harum-scarum, wildly; headlong, headfirst, head over heels; rashly, recklessly, precipitately, unwarily, carelessly, heedlessly, injudiciously, thoughtlessly; impetuously, impulsively, hastily, hurriedly.