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YourHub.com \\ Ventura \\ Stories \\ Posting is no longer available. \\ I'm Mad About...

I Refuse to Put up with Like, Like, Any More

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Contributed by: Lawrence Berk on 6/5/2007

Enough is, like, more than enough for all of us who continue to be victimized by having to read and listen to words which add nothing to our understanding of what is, like, being said.

For more time than I, like, like to recall, I've tolerated the omnipresence of this, like, superfluous word, spread throughout America primarily by conversational youth, much like fleas proliferate on stray canines, introducing any word or phrase which follows it, just as a dog's body must precede its tail. What needs to be done to rid our syntax of this four-letter plague is nothing short of a total ban. The letters l-i-k-e, by themselves or as a part of any other, like, longer word, must be deleted from all dictionaries, unabridged and abridged, large and small, whether they be Webster's, Oxford's, Random House's, or any others. Along with like, we must learn to live without liked, likeable, childlike, likelihood, likely, likelier, likeliest, like-minded, liken, likeness, likewise or any other hyphenated or non-hyphenated combination of letters which begin, end or slide into the middle of some other word in that combination of four letters. If we allow the four-letter sequence to continue to exist on the pages of our printed books, journals, magazines and newspapers, not to mention internet communications, then we have no chance of extinguishing this ubiquitous word from our hearing or reading.

Even Newsweek, a couple of years ago, in quoting Britney Spears on Michael Jackson (Perspectives, March 28, 2005) had to succumb to perpetuating the word: "He needs someone to be, like, 'OK, let's buck you up, let's give you a mustache, let's rough you up, let's go to a bar, let's get drunk and be a man.'" (Emphasis, like, added.)

Those who would defend the syntactical status quo need only contemplate, like, for a moment, what has happened to our nation with the "f" word. It has been part of the Addenda section of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary for as long as I can remember. It is used with reckless abandon on The Sopranos and NYPD Blue, to name only two television series now in reruns, in countless movies, and can be seen in a variety of graffiti prominently displayed on bathroom stalls, fences and block walls, and just about any other surface which can be vandalized by spray paint, indelible markers or etching. Many of our entertainment celebrities wouldn't consider doing stand-up comedy without using it as a noun, adverb, adjective or any other part of speech, and have even connected it to the most revered of all words, mother. The fact that it is considered by some to be profane is not as significant as its overuse ad nauseam. The point is, we had our chance to ban it and instead tolerated it. Now we are living with the dastardly consequences, having to explain to kindergartners what it means, while at the same time admonishing them NEVER to use the word in any context.

We must not wait until the "l" word reaches a similar status before we take action. You may say that it can't happen, but I assure you it can. In fact, I've already heard the juxtaposition of both words in phrases and sentences which couples them so closely as to taint the formerly unprofane "l" word with the profane "f" word in an expletive-rich curse which need not be repeated here.

At this point, I know civil libertarians and free speech fanatics are wriggling on their potato-friendly couches. They are thinking about Larry Flynt's victory in the 1988 Supreme Court decision which supported his right to parody the late Reverend Jerry Falwell's mother, copying the phrasing in an ad for a then popular alcoholic beverage. But neither of them at that time had to put up with the likes of like, like we all do.

Lake Superior State University in Michigan must be given credit for its effort to ban words, and the "l" word made it to their 1997 list, having been submitted by Alan C. Myers, senior editor, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing C., Grand Rapids, Michigan. The slight variation of his entry included the contraction "I'm" which precedes "like," as follows:

I'm Like - Used with the hated 'he goes/she goes.' For example: "My son dashes into the room and he goes, 'Dad! Dad!' and I'm like, 'What? What?' The perpetrators of such babble should be locked together in a room, with their baseball caps riveted bill forward."

(This diatribe is being interrupted by some terrible news. It's too late! I just visited a web site, Answers.com, which has a comprehensive listing of the various uses of the "l" word, crediting Valley Girls as having initiated its usage along with "DUH," to mention only one other valleyspeakism. Like, like has been legitimized! Read the following and weep):

Like is sometimes used to paraphrase a speaker:

She was, like, no way!

He was like, I'll be there in five minutes.

So I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

Or to introduce pantomime as an extra component of the sentence:

I was like (speaker rolls eyes).

As a hedge:

Like can be used to indicate that the following phrase will be used as an approximation or exaggeration, or that the following words may not be quite right, but are close enough:

I have like no money.

As a discourse particle or filler:

Like can also be used in much the same way as um...:

I, like, don't know what to do.

Like I said, it's definitely too late. To, like, quote Gilda Radner, "Never mind."

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