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Look up like in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

In English, the word like can be a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, particle, conjunction, hedge, interjection, and quotative. Image File history File links Emblem-important. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... “Adverbs” redirects here. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ... In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ... A hedge is a mitigating device used to lessen the impact of an utterance. ... An interjection is a part of speech that usually has no grammatical connection to the rest of the sentence and simply expresses emotion on the part of the speaker, although most interjections have clear definitions. ... A verbum dicendi (or declaratory word) is a word that expresses speech, introduces a quotation, or marks a transition to speech which may be considered non-standard. ...

Word history

As a preposition or adjective, it comes from the Middle English like meaning "similar", which in turn comes from Anglo-Saxon gelīc and Old Norse líkr. The verb "to like" came from Anglo-Saxon līcian. Both words may be related to Anglo-Saxon līc = "body", and are cognates of the modern German adjective "gleich" (=same, equal). Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... Several equivalence relations in mathematics are called similarity. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Old Norse or Danish tongue is the Germanic language once spoken by the inhabitants of the Nordic countries (for instance during the Viking Age). ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

As a preposition used in comparisons

Like is one of the words in the English language that can introduce a simile. Examples: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A simile is a comparison of two unlike things, typically marked by use of like, as, than, or resembles. Examples may include the snow was as thick as a blanket, or she was as smart as a crow, or the usage of emotions similes such as madder than a bull...

• He eats like a pig.
• He has a toy like hers.

(Note: This last example is not a simile, which compares two dissimilar things. The fact that the toys are similar precludes this example from being a simile. "His toy spun like Fourth of July fireworks" would work because, although the toy and the fireworks are essentially different, the comparison helps explain how the toy moved.)

Similes can be contrasted with metaphors, which are phrases which say that something is something else when the intended meaning is that the two things are similar in some way: This article is about metaphor in literature and rhetoric. ...

• He was a pig yesterday. (Intended meaning: He ate like a pig yesterday.)

As a conjunction

Like is often used in place of the subordinating conjunction as or as if. Examples: A subordinating conjunction, also called a dependent word or subordinator, is a word that joins a dependent clause and an independent clause. ... // AS, As, aS, or as may stand for: AS Acquisition strategy, a High-level business and technical management approach designed to achieve program objectives within specified resource constraints. ...

• He acts like a girl does.
• He acts as a girl does.

• They look like they don't want to go to school.
• They look as if they don't want to go to school.

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 criticised for its usage by prescriptivists, the "as" or "as if" 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?" Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A Winston cigarette advertisement from 1971, noting the qualms about the grammar used in the former Winston tastes good like a cigarette should advertisements. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language. ...

The appropriateness of its usage as a conjunction is still disputed, however. In some circles it is considered a faux pas to use like instead of as or as if, whereas in other circles as sounds stilted. Some English words are often used in ways that are contentious among writers on usage and other prescriptivists. ... Look up faux pas in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

As a verb

Like can be used to express a feeling of attraction, weaker than love and distinct from it in important ways. In the case of a choice this is also called preference. Examples: Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. ... Preference (or taste) is a concept, used in the social sciences, particularly economics. ...

• I like her.
• They like Jane.
• I like traveling.

Many younger teenagers and children will use this term to refer to a crush by saying "like like" whereas "like" refers to as a friend, sometimes stressing the word instead of repeating it. Example:

• Do you "like" her or do you "like like" her?

Like is also used in the field of criminal justice to express that one thinks a suspect is possibly guilty of a crime. Example:

• I like John for that homicide.

As an adjective

Like can be used as an adjective meaning "similar". Example:

• Argon, neon, and like gases are inert.

As a noun

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

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

Valley speak and beatniks

The word like has several very common uses in informal speech. These uses of like are associated with Valley girls (which refers to teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, a community in Los Angeles) in pop culture, as made famous through the song "Valley Girl" by Frank Zappa, released in 1982, and the film of the same name, released the following year. The stereotyped "valley girl" language is an exaggeration of the variants of California English spoken by younger generations. It is also used in the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange by the narrator as part of his teenage slang. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... San Fernando Valley from its southwestern edge. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... Frank Vincent Zappa[1] (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, musician, and film director. ... Year 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar). ... California English is a dialect of the English language spoken in the U.S. state of California. ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Clockwork Orange redirects here. ...

"I, like, didn't say anything."

However, nontraditional usage of the word has been around at least since the 1950s, introduced through beat 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. The word finds similar use in Scooby Doo: This does not cite any references or sources. ... Beatnik is a media stereotype that borrowed the most superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s to present a distorted (and sometimes violent), cartoon-like misrepresentation of the real-life people and the spirituality found in Jack Kerouacs autobiographical fiction. ... Maynard G. Krebs was the beatnik sidekick of the title character in the early 1960s U.S. television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. ... Alan Hale, Jr. ... The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a situation comedy which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Scooby-Doo IS THE SHIT is a short ass-running American animated television series produced for your mom Saturday morning television in several different versions from 1969 to the present. ...

Shaggy: "Like, let's get outta here, Scoob!"

Such uses of the word like can now be found virtually everywhere English is spoken, particularly by young, native English speakers.

As an adverb

Like can be used as an adverb meaning "nearly" or to indicate that the phrase in which it appears is to be taken metaphorically. This is normally considered to be 'lazy' speech. Examples:

• I, like, died!
• They, like, hate you!

As a quotative

Like is sometimes used as a verbum dicendi to introduce a quotation or paraphrase, especially if the quote is being recited from short-term memory and therefore may or may not be exact. If the speaker changes his or her voice to impersonate the person who said the quotation, it is probably in exact words. As in the examples below, Like for this usage is always joined with a "to be" verb (was, were, is etc). A verbum dicendi (or declaratory word) is a word that expresses speech, introduces a quotation, or marks a transition to non-standard or non-grammatical speech. ...

Examples:

• She was, like, no way!
• He was like, I'll be there in five minutes.
• He was like [speaker's voice deepens], "you need to leave the room right now!"

Like can also be used to communicate a pantomime, or to paraphrase an explicitly unspoken idea or sentiment:

• I was like [speaker rolls eyes].
• I was like, who does she think she is?

Sometimes used to introduce non-verbal quotations. For instance, facial expressions, or even miming whole-body actions (tripping, walking into something) by use of hand gestures.

See Golato (2000) for a similar quotative in German.

As a hedge

Like can be used 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. Examples:

• I have, like, no money.
• The restaurant is, like, five miles from here.

As a discourse particle or interjection

Like can also be used in much the same way as um... It has become a trend among North American teenagers to use the word like in this way.(see Valspeak, discourse marker, and speech disfluency): This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... In discourse analysis, a discourse marker is a word or phrase that marks a boundary in a discourse, typically as part of a dialogue. ... Speech disfluencies are any breaks in otherwise fluent speech: for example, words/sentences/phrases that are cut off, restarts/repetitions/repairs (The best part of my job is. ...

• I, like, don't know what to do.

It is also becoming more often used (Northern England and Hiberno-English in particular) at the end of a sentence, as an alternative to you know: Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

• I didn't say, like, anything.

See Fleischman (1998) for a similar discourse particle in French.

As a way to use an onomatopoeia as a verb

For example, "It was like, boom!" can be substituted for "It exploded!" Often used with exuberance. Extremely casual. Often combined with non-verbal elements.

External links

• Article on possible linguistic and social uses
• Sources on like

Bibliography

• 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. 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. 79). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• 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.
• Buchstaller, Isabelle (2004). The sociolinguistic constraints on the quotative system. British English and US English compared. PhD thesis. University of Edinburgh.
• Buchstaller, Isabelle (2006). Globalization and Local Reappropriation: The case of the Quotative System. Christa Dürscheid, Jürgen Spitzmüller (Eds.). Trends and Developments in Youth Language Research. Frankfurt: Lang.
• Buchstaller, Isabelle (2006). Social Stereotypes, Personality Traits and Regional Perceptions displaced: Attitudes towards the “new” quotatives in the UK. Journal of Sociolinguistics.
• Cukor-Avila, Patricia. (2002). She say, she go, she be 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.
• 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.
• 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. 171-201). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• 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. 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.
• Underhill, Robert. (1988). Like is like, focus. American Speech, 63, 234-246.