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Given a sentence like:

I couldn’t not help him right?

I was wondering if that sentence was grammatically correct, and even if it is, what better way is there to rephrase it? Because as it stands, it’s “I could not not help. . . .” and it doesn’t seem grammatically correct although it may be.

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  • I was bound to help him?
    – WS2
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:10
  • I had to help him.
    – Jim
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:10
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    Normally "I had to help him" would be considered "correct". However, for the right audience (not a roomful of English teachers) "I couldn't not help him" would be understood and idiomatic (if a bit abrasive to the Pists standing about). If you want to add "right?" you should separate that from the rest of the sentence with a comma. The latter form has the advantage that you can emphasize "not" and convey more of the emotion of what I presume was an emotional situation -- "I couldn't not help him.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 21:42
  • “I couldn’t not help him” is perfectly grammatical in English under all circumstances. Moreover, it conveys a unique meaning that no shorter phrasing would provide.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 0:21

4 Answers 4

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These are more compact:

could not but help him

Calendar of State Papers: Foreign Series, of the Reign of... Great Britain. Public Record Office

I declared to him her Majesty's manner of proceeding for a league of the princes of Germany, professing Christian religion, against the Pope, and desired his advice on the matter, which could not but help him; and made him acquainted with the articles of it

couldn't but help him

Pioneer Years in Belize- Page 42 Gerhard S. Koop - 1991

Since he had served us once as a taxi driver after one of us had surgery and required a return trip to Spanish Lookout, we couldn't but help him. We arrived at Klaas Reimers at 5 p.m. Here we met with the sorrowing parents.

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One common (in the United States) idiomatic way to express the idea you have in mind is with the phrase "I couldn't just stand there"—the strong implication being that speaker felt impelled to help the person or thing that was in difficulty, instead of remaining a bystander.

Ngram doesn't chart contractions, owing to a limitation in the way it reads punctuation marks such as apostrophes and hyphens, but even the formal and (probably) less common form "could not just stand there" shows considerable growth in usage since the early decades of the twentieth century:

Sometimes, however, the phrase "I couldn't just stand there" introduces an action that serves to get the speaker out of difficulty, rather than to help others, and the chart doesn't show only instances where the "couldn't not help" sense of the phrase was intended.

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Perhaps I couldn’t do anything but/other than help him or I couldn’t refrain from/resist helping him or I had no choice but to help him would give more emphasis while avoiding the “...couldn’t not...” construction.

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I would put in a comma in the sentence to make it a tag question.

I couldn't not help him, right?

So by making this statement you are seeking confirmation from someone else that you were powerless to do anything for "him". It is not certain whether you actually tried to help the person or just gave up after thinking about his problem.

You could say:

"I was powerless to help him, right?"

"I tried to help him, right?"

"It was impossible to help him, right"

EDIT: As pointed out below I failed to read the double negative.

So I would offer simply

"I had to help him, right?"

I hate using double negatives... too easy to miss if you are not careful.

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    That's not what the sentence means at all. I think you've missed the double negation. It means the exact opposite of what you say, really. The speaker did help ‘him’.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 0:21

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