Word family noun help helper helpfulness ≠ unhelpfulness helping helplessness adjective helpful ≠ unhelpful helpless verb help adverb helpfully ≠ unhelpfully helplessly
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishunhelpfulun‧help‧ful /ʌnˈhelpfəl/ adjective USELESSnot helping in a situation and sometimes making it worse The authorities are being particularly unhelpful. —unhelpfully adverb —unhelpfulness noun [uncountable]Examples from the Corpus
unhelpful• The customs officials were impatient, rude, and unhelpful.• But a national debate on architecture at this level is as banal as it is unhelpful.• For anyone not already familiar with these works, the presentation is unhelpful.• None of this behaviour adopted by professionals is intended to be unhelpful.• The large number of parses produced are unnecessary and unhelpful in the recognition application.• Among the remaining patients, computed tomography was helpful in 19%, but unhelpful or wrong in 23%.• This is ultimately unhelpful to women. 