It’s an especially tired cliché these days to point out that the word “love” is overused. As the explanation predictably goes, if I say I love my spouse and my Zaxby’s Kickin’ Chicken sandwich with crinkle fries, then “love” is worth only about $5.99 (even less if I have a coupon).
But I’m worried about another verb that is in danger of losing all its cache, one that has metastasized in our pop culture vocabulary to the point that it, too, has become a generic and meaningless compliment. I’m talking about the word “like.”
It’s everywhere. No matter what we do online, we must “like” it. “Please like us on Facebook,” desperate companies beg. “Like this picture,” we are told. “Like this video.” “Like this comment.” It is entirely possible that within the last 48 hours, you have clicked to tell the world that you liked the fact that someone else liked something. Like begets like, as they say in the science building.
Unfortunately, such an epidemic of liking is not new. Allow me to give a brief history of this sorely abused word. I’ll pause a moment for some readers to turn to the people next to them and politely request to be killed now.
Those who are still with us may be interested to know that the word “like” comes from the Old English “gelic,” which originally meant, “to express lukewarm approval on the Internet.” Over the centuries, this versatile word has worn endless grammatical hats. As a preposition, it has “worked like a charm.” As an adjective, it has brought together people of like taste in similes. As a conjunction, it has helped us see things like others do. As a noun, it has its share of likes and dislikes. As a Southern adverb, it sounds real non-standard-like. And as a verb, it would like to be treated with slightly less reckless abandon.
It has become, of course, a favorite space-filler in conversation: “This Clax is, like, such a dork. I heard that, like, he doesn’t even have a Kindle.” This empty usage of “like” was especially abused by that species known as the Valley Girl, which flourished in southern California circa 1984 and has since spread like, you know, kudzu.
Now “like” is even standard for quoting ourselves. Who among us has not said the following sentence at some point lately: “So, she texted me, and I was like, ‘Wow.'” I’m picturing future linguists — attempting to translate 21st century American dialect — who will find this sentence, scratch their heads, and be like, “Kill me now.”
But as we speak, dictionaries are being amended to indicate the most popular current usage of this word: “Like (līk). Verb. To add one’s vote to a virtual tally of similarly minded individuals who have formed a pretend community to declare once and for all, in the court of cyber-opinion, that, for example, this is indeed a cute poodle.”
For several weeks I’ve been pondering this linguistic like-o-rama that we’re living in, but two things happened recently to make me believe in column karma. First, last Tuesday my colleague and I were looking up an unfamiliar word on Merriam-Webster.com and discovered that the vogue for liking everything has even invaded the dictionary. As it turns out, the word we were seeking was ranked in the bottom 30 percent of lookups, but it had experienced a 12 percent increase in popularity in the past seven days. I can just picture this word at the Oscars on Sunday night: “You like me. You really like me.”
Second, I read a cartoon in today’s newspaper in which a woman is talking to her boyfriend. She says, “I like you, Gerald … I’m just not sure if I ‘like you’ like you … or sort of ‘Facebook’ like you.” Clearly I’m behind the curve poking fun at American like-mania, and clearly, the word “like” now means little more than, “to acknowledge the tolerable existence of.”
So what have we learned? Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid it’s no longer enough to tell each other, “I love you.” And, apparently, it’s even more lame to say, “I like you.” So what affectionate expressions are left to us? Try this: “Dear, I want you to have my Kickin’ Chicken sandwich and crinkle fries.” How do I like thee? Let me click the ways.
