helpmate means A person who supplies help or companionship. It carries an Arena rating of 1687, earned across 35 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, helpmate ranks #1,270 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,776 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,387 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #2,616 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
Why “helpmate” is a great word
HELPMATE — [Noun] A person, especially a spouse, who provides both practical help and steady companionship. It is a folk-etymological alteration of ‘helpmeet’, reanalyzed as a compound of ‘help’ and ‘mate’, attested from the early 18th century. Unlike an “assistant,” which denotes a subordinate role in a task, or a “companion,” which focuses on fellowship and presence, a helpmate implies an equal partnership in the shared labour of a life. It is the second pair of arms to steady the ladder, the silent partner in raising the barn beam, the shared lantern held over a map in the dark—a quiet testament that the deepest solace is not in being rescued, but in being joined.
Etymology
A folk-etymological alteration of helpmeet, by reanalysis as help + mate.
noun
- A person who supplies help or companionship.
- A wife or spouse.e.g.“The host himself was one of those very quiet men whom we usually see linked to the most active helpmates.” — 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 191:
- A recreational problem in chess in which both sides cooperate to achieve a specific goal.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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