Like, What? The Power and History of a Popular Phrase

For many speakers, saying “like,” like, all the time has become ubiquitous – or at least it feels that way to those who find it disdainful. Though it might seem like nails on a chalkboard to those not yet on board with the novel roles “like” is playing in our speech, when we dismiss those speakers, we miss the more important message underneath and the novel purposes that non-traditional “like” use is serving.

How, like, did like begin?

In its use as a verb, “to like” is of Germanic origin and has been around for over a thousand years in English, though it was used a bit differently early on, when it appeared as lician. At first, “like” appeared only in sentences with impersonal subjects such as “It likes me not,” but then, by about 1200, the person experiencing the "liking" started to take over subject position, as in “he likes” or “I like.”

In Old English (the period before 1100), we also find “like” used as an adjective, meaning 'resemblance' or 'similarity,' most likely a borrowing from Old Scandinavian, as in “His son was him like.” A few centuries later, like morphs into a preposition as well, probably developing from this earlier adjectival use, i.e., “becomes like his father.”

Slightly edgier uses, such as “like” in its still prescriptively disfavored but popular use as a conjunction (e.g., “like his dad had done”), have been around longer than we might think, dating back to the 15th century. Even modern conjunction usage after verbs of perception such as “feels like,” “seems like,” or “appears like” started to appear by the 1800s.

This tells us that the syntactic (sentential) role and position of “like” has long been flexible, and, importantly, in its prepositional and conjunctive usage, it has long carried a meaning of ‘similarity’ or ‘resemblance.’

From a historical perspective, the discourse marking form “like” (“He, like, looks sad”) has been around a lot longer than most of us would imagine. It dates back, in terms of being used as a discourse marker, to the 1700s where we find it used both in literary dialogue and in more colloquial speech in British trial transcripts.

It might feel very American, but the new forms of like are definitely British imports. Alex D’arcy, who literally wrote the book on “like,” found prevalent use of sentence-initial “like” in recordings of elderly speakers born in the late 1800s or around the turn of the century in both Britain and New Zealand. The Oxford English Dictionary also places “like, wow” with the beat generation. And who can forget, like, Shaggy from Scooby-Doo in the late '60s?

So, the conventional wisdom that “like” came in with the valley girls is simply incorrect – association with a Southern California ethos in the 1980s and 1990s might have helped take “like” mainstream, but it was a widely used feature in British (and Irish) dialects for centuries before.

Why like?

The non-traditional discourse marking use of “like” seems to have developed from its use as a preposition or conjunction, deriving from its value in expressing similarity or approximation (e.g., "he is like a genius" becomes "he is, like, a genius" and then “like, he is a genius”). And in terms of its function – it is surprisingly useful! Here are some of the major ways speakers use it today, all of which revolve around projecting a speaker’s subjective sensibility:

• Like used as an approximator instead of the preposition “about.” In this context, like is used to flag approximation or to mark that you are making an estimation: “He’s, like, 15 or 16 years old.”
• As a sentential adverbial – usually used at the beginning of a sentence to link that sentence with a previous one and provide a subjective example or a speaker’s viewpoint: “I try not to worry about it too much. Like, what would be the point?”
• As a discourse marker to indicate a looseness of meaning, as in “She’s, like, my oldest friend” (meaning it may not exactly be true, but close), or to add emphasis, “it’s like 100 miles from here!”
• As a quotative verb instead of the verb “to say”: “I was like, ‘I hope you make it,’ and he was like, ‘I’ll be there!’” Again, looseness or subjectivity is key here, as it does not commit a speaker to an exact quote in the same way that using the verb “to say” would.

Is it really a female thing?

Another myth is that it is an exclusively female phenomenon. While it is true that, among the oldest speakers who have been studied, “like” was more prevalent among women, this is not the case for those under age 40. The biggest user group of “like” is younger speakers, rather than simply female speakers.

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So, whether you are a "like" user yourself, or are among those who find themselves cringing when hearing it used by others, the best advice linguists can give you is to relax about it. Research shows it is one of the fastest growing features in global Englishes, which suggests it is here to stay.

As younger speakers become older speakers, its stigma will fade and it will simply be something everyone says. And as for its seemingly incessant use among our youngest speakers? We also find that the use of “like” decreases as people age, so that too will pass.