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"Ordinary people, too, have long been using like as an appendage to indicate similarity with a trace of hesitation. The “slow-like” kind of usage is a continuat
by iamed2 10y ago
"Ordinary people, too, have long been using like as an appendage to indicate similarity with a trace of hesitation. The “slow-like” kind of usage is a continuation of this, and Saul Bellow has thoroughly un- Beatnik characters in his novels of the 1950s use like in a way we would expect a decade or two later. “That’s the right clue and may do me some good. Something very big. Truth, like,” says Tommy Wilhelm in 1956’s Seize the Day,"
My grandfather uses "like" often, but only in this way (he grew up in Depression-era semi-rural Canada). I've always found that interesting since I rarely see that usage mentioned.
Anyone else have older relatives who use "like" this way?
- Declanomous 10y agoI've spent a lot of time in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota, and that particular usage of the word like is still common, even among younger individuals. My roommate in college was from a really small town in Minnesota, and he'd describe things as "All [adjective]-like". He used like in the other manners as well though.
- ende 10y agoYou see this usage commonly around parts of England, particularly among some of the northwestern dialects like Scouse.
- Declanomous 10y agoInteresting. My roommate is from somewhere in northern England; I'll have to pay attention for this in the future. His parents speak with received pronunciation though, so I suspect he has fewer colloquialisms in his speech than the general population of wherever he's from. He contends that his accent and figures of speech wouldn't be recognized as English at this point, but every American I know pegs him as British almost instantly, so who knows.
- pc2g4d 10y agoHan Solo: "Then we'll do it real quiet like". Return of the Jedi.
- pavlov 10y agoMaybe it's an old Norse/Germanic loan? The -lig/-lik suffix appears in all Scandinavian languages with similar usage: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-lig https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-lig