"could not help making fun of him"
Salaam
Does the underlined colored part of the sentence below mean that Maxwell couldn't stop a friend from making fun on him (Maxwell) because of his funny poem? If not, what does it mean please? Thanks in advance!
"In August 1857, the crew of the Niagara set sail from Ireland, prepared to take a giant leap forward for humanity by stringing a telegraph cable between Europe and the US, over which a message would cross the Atlantic in an instant, rather than take several weeks. However, the cable broke in the middle of the ocean. That failure inspired one of the typical poems of a Scottish mathematician, age 26, James Clerk Maxwell, which began:
Under the sea, under the sea
No little signals are coming to me
Under the sea, under the sea
Something has surely gone wrong
He could not help making fun of a friend who was working on this technological adventure, which was successfully completed nine years later."
Top answer
No. It means this. He (ie Maxwell) could not help making fun of a friend who was working on board the Niagara.
- No.
- It means this.
- He (ie Maxwell) could not help making fun of a friend who was working on board the Niagara.
- If you can't help doing something, it means that you can't resist doing something.
- Consider this simpler example.
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No. It means this.
He (ie Maxwell) could not help making fun of a friend who was working on board the Niagara.
If you can't help doing something, it means that you can't resist doing something.
Consider this simpler example.
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