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Like…

So many people use the word ‘like’ five or six times in one sentence, which can, like, be annoying.

But maybe the word ‘like’ and the people who like to use it don’t deserve such a hard time.

The word has for ages been pigeonholed as a sign of laziness and stupidity, but research has actually placed a substantial amount of functionality on ‘like’.

In the early 2000s, ‘like’ was increasingly common as a natural part of speech. It then rose to be maligned as a verbal tic used largely by women as a filler, due in part to people like Paris Hilton.

In actual fact, it was widely used before then by everyone, men included.

The word might have been born out of the 1980s, particularly glorified by this Frank Zappa song featuring his daughter as a California ‘bimbo’:

But it actually dates back much further than that, to the lord of the English language himself, per The Guardian:

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, written at the start of the 17th century, Valentine says to Cesario, “If the Duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario, you are like to be much advanced.” The linguist Anatoly Liberman says that this version of “like” was being used as a shorthand for likely, and may be the beginnings of our contemporary usage.

“Consider the following,” he writes. “‘All these three, belike, went together’ (1741, OED). Take away be-, and you will get a charming modern sentence: ‘All these three, like, went together.’” Belike meant “in all likelihood”.

No matter when the modern version came into play, the use of ‘like’ has increased over the decades.

In one five-minute exchange on a 2017 episode of Love Island, for example, the word was uttered 76 times, which is once every four seconds.

Malcolm Gladwell defended the word back in 1992, honouring the way it carries “a rich emotional nuance”.

But that did nothing to stem the tide of hate from worried parents, fed-up politicians, judgy educators, and the like.

The popular word, they argue, just makes someone sound uneducated and incapable:

Scores of recruitment specialists and public-speaking coaches have publicly bemoaned the word’s rise and say those who use it prevent themselves from getting opportunities. One law firm in America sent a memo to just its female employees and told them: “Learn hard words,” and “Stop saying ‘like’.”

Peter Mertens, an associate at PR firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe, has said: “There is nothing that will [lead you to being] dismissed more quickly than a few too many ‘likes’ during a meeting or on a call.”

There’s even tech that works against the word now. LikeSo is an app that is recommended by businesses to listen to speech and help stop the use of the word.

Gyles Brandreth, writing in the Oldie (apt), made a case that “like” was “the lazy linguistic filler of our times” and “very very irritating”.

Don’t worry if the word creeps into your sentence more often than others think is necessary.

Take comfort in the fact that many linguistic studies carried out today suggest people who say “like” may actually be more intelligent than those that don’t.

As Carmen Fought, professor of linguistics at Pitzer College, says, it is natural to judge but it is not always helpful.

Just, like, do you.

[source:guardian]