Like

{{Short description|English language word}} {{other uses}} {{Italic title}} {{multiple issues| {{more footnotes needed|date=July 2013}} {{more citations needed|date=September 2007}} }}

In English, the word '''''like''''' has a very wide range of uses, both conventional and non-standard. It can be used as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, particle, conjunction, hedge, filler, quotative, and semi-suffix.

==Uses== ===Comparisons=== ''Like'' is one of the words in the English language that can introduce a simile (a stylistic device comparing two dissimilar ideas). It can be used as a preposition, as in "He runs ''like'' a cheetah"; it can also be used as a suffix, as in "She acts very child-''like''{{-"}}. It can also be used in non-simile comparisons such as, "She has a dog ''like'' ours".<ref name="cambridge">{{cite news |title=Like |url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/like |website=Cambridge Dictionary |publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date=May 5, 2020}}</ref>

=== As a conjunction === ''Like'' is often used in place of the subordinating conjunction ''as'', or ''as if''.<ref>{{cite news |title=As or like? |url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/as-or-like |website=Cambridge Dictionary |publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date=May 5, 2020}}</ref> Examples:

* They look ''like'' they have been having fun. * They look ''as if'' they have been having fun.

Many people became aware of the two options in 1954, when a famous ad campaign for Winston cigarettes introduced the slogan "Winston tastes good—like a cigarette should." The slogan was criticized for its usage by prescriptivists, the "as" construction being considered more proper. Winston countered with another ad, featuring a woman with greying hair in a bun who insists that ought to be "Winston tastes good ''as'' a cigarette should" and is shouted down by happy cigarette smokers asking "What do you want—good grammar or good taste?"

The appropriateness of its usage as a conjunction is still disputed, however. In some circles, it is considered an error to use ''like'' instead of ''as'' or ''as if'' in formal prose.

===As a noun === Like can be used as a noun meaning "preference" or "kind". Examples:

* She had many likes and dislikes. * We'll never see the like again.

When used specifically on social media, it can refer to interactions with content posted by a user, commonly referred to as "likes" on websites such as Twitter or Instagram.

* That picture you posted got a lot of likes!

=== As a verb === As a verb, ''like'' generally refers to a fondness for something or someone.<ref name="cambridge"/>

* I ''like'' riding my bicycle.

''Like'' can be used to express a feeling of attraction between two people that is weaker than love. It does not necessarily imply a romantic attraction.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Seltzer |first1=Leon F |title='I Have Feelings for You,' Its Eight Different Meanings |url=https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201703/i-have-feelings-you-its-eight-different-meanings |website=Psychology Today |access-date=May 5, 2020 |date=March 7, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Tigar |first1=Lindsay |title=How to Say 'I Like You' When You're Not Ready for 'I Love You' |url=https://www.bustle.com/articles/134128-how-to-say-i-like-you-when-youre-not-ready-for-i-love-you |website=Bustle |access-date=May 5, 2020 |date=January 19, 2016}}</ref> Example:

* Marc ''likes'' Denise. * I've taken a ''liking'' to our new neighbors.

''Like'' can also be used to indicate a wish for something in a polite manner.<ref name="cambridge"/> Example:

* Would you like a cup of coffee?

{{Anchor|Colloquial uses}}

===As a colloquial adverb === In some regional dialects of English, ''like'' may be used as an adverbial colloquialism in the construction ''be'' + ''like'' + ''to'' infinitive, meaning "be likely to, be ready to, be on the verge of." Examples:

* He was like to go back next time. * He was like to go mad.

As the following attest, this construction has a long history in the English language.

* But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half-finished, and he ''was like to'' go out of his mind with fright. (Mark Twain, 1889, ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court'') * He saw he ''was like to'' leave such an heir. (Cotton Mather, 1853, ''Magnalia Christi Americana'') * He ''was like to'' lose his life in the one [battle] and his liberty in the other [capture], but there was none of his money at stake in either. (Charles MacFarlane and Thomas Napier Thomson, 1792, ''Comprehensive History of England'') * He was in some fear that if he could not bring about the King's desires, he ''was like to'' lose his favor. (Gilbert Burnet, 1679, ''History of the Reformation of the Church of England'')

=== As a colloquial quotative === ''Like'' is sometimes used colloquially as a quotative to introduce a quotation or impersonation. This is also known as "quotation through simile". The word is often used to express that what follows is not an exact quotation but instead gives a general feel for what was said. In this usage, ''like'' functions in conjunction with a verb, generally ''be'' (but also ''say'', ''think'', etc.), as in the following examples:<ref name="mcwhorter">{{cite web |last1=McWhorter |first1=John |title=The Evolution of 'Like' |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/ |website=The Atlantic |access-date=5 May 2020 |date=November 25, 2016}}</ref>

* He was like, "I'll be there in five minutes." * She was like, "You need to leave the room right now!"

''Like'' can also be used to paraphrase an implicitly unspoken idea or sentiment:

* I was like, "Who do they think they are?"

The marking of past tense is often omitted (compare historical present):

* They told me all sorts of terrible things, and I'm like "Forget it then."<ref>Quoted from: Daniel P. Cullen, ''"I'm Learning as I Go, and I Don't Like That": Urban Community College Students' College Literacy'', ProQuest, 2008, p. 210.</ref>

It is also sometimes used to introduce non-verbal mimetic performances, e.g., facial expressions, hand gestures, body movement, as well as sounds and noises:<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/01/25/linguists-are-like-get-used/ruUQoV0XUTLDjx72JojnBI/story.html |title=Linguists are like, 'Get used to it!' |work=The Boston Globe}}</ref>

* I was like [speaker rolls eyes]. * The car was like, "vroom!"

The use of ''like'' as a quotative is known to have been around since at least the 1980s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blyth |first1=Carl |last2=Recktenwald |first2=Sigrid |last3=Wang |first3=Jenny |title=I'm like, "Say What?!": A New Quotative in American Oral Narrative |journal=American Speech |date=1990 |volume=65 |issue=3 |pages=215–227 |doi=10.2307/455910|jstor=455910 }}</ref>

{{anchor|filler}}

=== As a discourse particle === ''Like'' can be used in much the same way as "um..." or "er..." as a discourse particle. It has become common especially among North American teenagers to use the word "like" in this way, as in Valspeak. For example:

* I, like, don't know what to do.

It is also becoming more often used (East Coast Scottish English, Northern England English, Hiberno-English and Welsh English in particular) at the end of a sentence, as an alternative to ''you know''. This usage is sometimes considered to be a colloquial interjection and it implies a desire to remain calm and defuse tension:

* I didn't say anything, like. * Just be cool, like.

It is traditionally, though not quite every time, used to finish a sentence in the Northern English dialect Geordie.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/may/15/why-do-people-like-say-like-so-much-in-praise-of-an-underappreciated-word |title=Why do people, like, say, 'like' so much? |last= Wolfson |first=Sam |date= 15 May 2022|website=The Guardian |series= |access-date=20 May 2022 |quote= But there are more uses than that, for example the Geordie tradition of finishing sentences with a like.}}</ref>

Use of ''like'' as a filler has a long history in Scots English, as in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel ''Kidnapped'':

<blockquote><poem>"What'll like be your business, mannie?" "What's like wrong with him?" said she at last.</poem></blockquote>

=== As a hedge === ''Like'' can be used as hedge to indicate that the following phrase will be an approximation or exaggeration, or that the following words may not be quite right, but are close enough. It may indicate that the phrase in which it appears is to be taken metaphorically or as a hyperbole. This use of ''like'' is sometimes regarded as adverbial, as ''like'' is often synonymous here with adverbial phrases of approximation, such as "almost" or "more or less". Examples:

* I have like no money left. * The restaurant is only like five miles from here. * I like almost died!

Conversely, ''like'' may also be used to indicate a counterexpectation to the speaker, or to indicate certainty regarding the following phrase.<ref name="mcwhorter" /> Examples:

* There was like a living kitten in the box! * This is like the only way to solve the problem. * I like know what I'm doing, okay?

Very early use of this locution{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} can be seen in a New Yorker cartoon of 15 September 1928, in which two young ladies are discussing a man's workplace: "What's he got – an awfice?" "No, he's got like a loft." It is also used in the 1962 novel ''A Clockwork Orange'' by the narrator as part of his teenage slang and in the ''Top Cat'' cartoon series from 1961 to 1962 by the jazz beatnik type characters.

== History == {{more citations needed section|date=February 2016}} Especially since the late 20th century onward, ''like'' has appeared, in addition to its traditional uses, as a colloquialism across all dialects of spoken English, serving as a discourse particle, signalling either a hedge indicating uncertainty, or alternatively a marker of focus signalling that what follows is new information<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Underhill |first1=Robert |date=Autumn 1988 |title=Like is, like, Focus. |journal=American Speech |volume=63 #3 |issue=3 |pages=234–246 |doi=10.2307/454820 |jstor=454820 }} name="Pragmatic Markers">{{cite book|title=Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude |editor=Andersen, Gisle |editor2=Thorstein Fretheim|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|year=2000|pages=31–3|isbn=9027250987 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jLbs6k1t9KYC}}</ref><ref name="Like and Language Ideology" /> Although these particular colloquial uses of ''like'' became widespread among young students in the 1980s, its use as a filler is a fairly old regional practice in Welsh English and in Scotland; it was used similarly at least as early as the 19th century. It may also be used in a systemic format to allow individuals to introduce what they say, how they say and think.<ref>Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A., & Leap, W. (2009). Introducing sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press.</ref>

Despite such prevalence in modern-day spoken English, colloquial usages of ''like'' rarely appear in writing (unless the writer is deliberately trying to replicate colloquial dialogue) and they have long been stigmatized in formal speech or in high cultural or high social settings. Furthermore, this use of ''like'' seems to appear most commonly, in particular, among people who were children and adolescents in the 1980s, while less so, or not at all, among people who were already middle-aged or elderly at that time. One suggested explanation was that younger English speakers were still developing their linguistic competence, and, metalinguistically wishing to express ideas without sounding too confident, certain, or assertive, use ''like'' to fulfill this purpose in the cases where they were using ''like'' as a hedge.<ref name="Pragmatic Markers">{{cite book|title=Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude |editor=Andersen, Gisle |editor2=Thorstein Fretheim|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|year=2000|pages=31–3|isbn=9027250987 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jLbs6k1t9KYC}}</ref>

In pop culture, colloquial applications of ''like'' (especially in verbal excess) are commonly and often comedically associated with Valley girls,<ref name="Keeping up">{{cite journal |last1=Bakker |first1=Iris |date=31 December 2018 |title=Keeping up With Hollywood's Valley Girls: A Lifespan Study Exploring the Kardashian Sisters' Use of Traditional and Non-Traditional Likes |url=https://journals.ed.ac.uk/lifespansstyles/article/view/2914 |journal=Lifespans & Styles |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=25–31 |doi=10.2218/ls.v4i2.2018.2914 |doi-access=free }}</ref> as made famous through the song "Valley Girl" by Frank Zappa, released in 1982, and the film of the same name, released in the following year.{{citation needed|date=September 2025}} Even though this use of ''like'' predates it, the stereotyped "valley girl" language is an exaggeration of the variants of California English spoken by people who were young in the 1980s.<ref name="Like and Language Ideology">{{cite journal |last1=D'Arcy |first1=Alexandra |date=1 November 2007 |title=''Like'' and Language Ideology: Disentangling Fact from Fiction |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article/82/4/386/5802/LIKE-AND-LANGUAGE-IDEOLOGY-DISENTANGLING-FACT-FROM |journal=American Speech |volume=82 |issue=4 |pages=386–419 |doi=10.1215/00031283-2007-025 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Keeping up" />

This{{Which|date=April 2026|reason=This statement was originally in the section about its use as a discourse particle or hedge, but didn't make clear which of those two usages it was describing.}} non-traditional usage of the word has been around at least since the 1950s, introduced through beat (or beatnik) and jazz culture. The beatnik character Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver) in the popular ''Dobie Gillis'' TV series of 1959-1963 brought the expression to prominence; this was reinforced in later decades by the character of Shaggy on ''Scooby-Doo'' (who was based on Krebs).

In the UK reality television series ''Love Island'' the word 'like' has been used an average of 300 times per episode, much to the annoyance of viewers.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/like-it-or-not-they-cant-stop-saying-it-on-love-island-zc8dtpkfs |title=Like it or not, they can't stop saying it on Love Island|first1=Sian |last1=Griffiths |author2=Julie Henry|date=June 16, 2019|work=The Times |location=London}}</ref>

A common eye dialect spelling is ''lyk''.

== See also== *Like button

==Bibliography== {{refbegin|30em}} *Andersen, Gisle. (1998). The pragmatic marker ''like'' from a relevance-theoretic perspective. In A. H. Jucker & Y. Ziv (Eds.) ''Discourse markers: Descriptions and Theory'' (pp.&nbsp;147–70). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Andersen, Gisle. (2000). The role of the pragmatic marker ''like'' in utterance interpretation. In G. Andersen & T. Fretheim (Ed.), ''Pragmatic markers and propositional attitude: Pragmatics and beyond'' (pp.&nbsp;79). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Barbieri, Federica. (2005). Quotative use in American English. A corpus-based, cross-register comparison. ''Journal of English Linguistics'', ''33'', (3), 225–256. *Barbieri, Federica. (2007). 'Older men and younger women': A corpus-based study of quotative use in American English. ''English World-Wide'', ''28'', (1), 23–45. *Blyth, Carl Jr.; Recktenwald, Sigrid; & Wang, Jenny. (1990). I'm like, 'Say what?!': A new quotative in American oral narrative. ''American Speech'', ''65'', 215–227. *Cruse, A. (2000). Meaning in language. An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. *Cukor-Avila, Patricia; (2002). ''She says'', ''she goes'', ''she is like'': Verbs of quotation over time in African American Vernacular English. ''American Speech'', ''77'' (1), 3-31. *Dailey-O'Cain, Jennifer. (2000). The sociolinguistic distribution of and attitudes toward focuser ''like'' and quotative ''like''. ''Journal of Sociolinguistics'', ''4'', 60–80. * D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2017). ''Discourse-pragmatic variation in context: Eight hundred years of LIKE''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Ferrara, Kathleen; & Bell, Barbara. (1995). Sociolinguistic variation and discourse function of constructed dialogue introducers: The case of be+like. ''American Speech'', ''70'', 265–289. *Fleischman, Suzanne. (1998). Des jumeaux du discours. ''La Linguistique'', ''34'' (2), 31–47. *Golato, Andrea; (2000). An innovative German quotative for reporting on embodied actions: ''Und ich so''/''und er so'' 'and I'm like/and he's like'. ''Journal of Pragmatics'', ''32'', 29–54. *Jones, Graham M. & Schieffelin, Bambi B. (2009). Enquoting Voices, Accomplishing Talk: Uses of ''Be+Like'' in Instant Messaging. ''Language & Communication'', 29(1), 77–113. *Jucker, Andreas H.; & Smith, Sara W. (1998). And people just you know like 'wow': Discourse markers as negotiating strategies. In A. H. Jucker & Y. Ziv (Eds.), ''Discourse markers: Descriptions and theory'' (pp.&nbsp;171–201). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A., & Leap, W. (2009). Introducing sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press. *Miller, Jim; Weinert, Regina. (1995). The function of like in dialogue. ''Journal of Pragmatics'', ''23'', 365–93. *Romaine, Suzanne; Lange, Deborah. (1991). The use of ''like'' as a marker of reported speech and thought: A case of grammaticalization in progress. ''American Speech'', ''66'', 227–279. *Ross, John R.; & Cooper, William E. (1979). Like syntax. In W. E. Cooper & E. C. T. Walker (Eds.), ''Sentence processing: Psycholinguistic studies presented to Merrill Garrett'' (pp.&nbsp;343–418). New York: Erlbaum Associates. *Schourup, L. (1985). ''Common discourse particles: "Like", "well", "y'know"''. New York: Garland. *Siegel, Muffy E. A. (2002). Like: The discourse particle and semantics. ''Journal of Semantics'', ''19'' (1), 35–71. *Taglimonte, Sali; & Hudson, Rachel. (1999). ''Be like'' et al. beyond America: The quotative system in British and Canadian youth. ''Journal of Sociolinguistics'', ''3'' (2), 147–172. *Tagliamonte, Sali, and Alexandra D'Arcy. (2004). He's like, she's like: The quotative system in Canadian youth. ''Journal of Sociolinguistics'', ''8'' (4), 493–514. *Underhill, Robert; (1988). Like is like, focus. ''American Speech'', ''63'', 234–246. {{refend}}

== References == {{Reflist}}

== External links == {{Wiktionary}}

* See [https://web.archive.org/web/20071011165859/http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2018485 Fleischman (1998)] ({{JSTOR|30249153}}) for a parallel discussion of ''like'' and the similar discourse particle ''genre'' in French.

Category:English grammar Category:English words