Why the Word ‘Like' Drives People Bananas

New York Times

01-07-2025

LIKE: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word, by Megan C. Reynolds
The word 'like' is addictive, even for those who relish the possibilities of language. 'Why do I insist on filling my speech with a word that means nothing when there are hundreds of others at my disposal?' asks the culture writer and Dwell magazine editor Megan C. Reynolds early in her new book.
Some may dismiss the titular 'Like' as the domain of brainless Valley Girls, or as merely an annoying verbal tic. But Reynolds argues that the word is not merely misunderstood, it's underestimated: In her view, it is a linguistic Swiss Army knife. (Reynolds concentrates primarily on American English, but states that it is, in fact, used the same way in many English-speaking countries.)
'Like' can, of course, still be employed as a preposition to suggest approximation or as a verb to indicate positive feeling; it can work as a filler, replacing 'uh' or 'um'; it can replace 'said' in storytelling; it can even, at times, function as an emphatic remark in itself.
This is all a big deal for Reynolds, who by her own account likes to talk. She writes that using 'like' makes someone seem more fun and approachable and even endearing in conversation. She loves that a word's slang usage has changed the English language. 'The way we tell stories now is fundamentally different because we make space for feeling as well as fact,' she writes. A few pages later, she adds that 'we're entering a pact with our conversational partner. Both parties know that the story that's about to unfold is just that — a small work of autofiction, imbued mostly with facts or, more specifically, the facts that truly matter.'
The book is a mounted defense of the honor of a word that, she says, everyone uses — which is doubtless true. But when Reynolds writes that 'seemingly no word in the English language has come under as much fire,' it's less convincing.
'Like' is framed as a rebuttal to complaints about the use of the word — but just who is this enemy constantly bashing its usage? Grammarians who live to nitpick? Someone from 1982? Barring a few discrete examples — a 2016 essay on CNN.com, for instance — the 'naysayers,' 'prescriptivists' and 'general sticks in the mud' are not clearly established.
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