That analysis seems especially appropriate in that this usage of like first reached the national consciousness with its usage by Beatniks in the 1950s, as in, “Like, wow!” We associate the Beatniks, as a prelude to the counterculture with their free-ranging aesthetic and recreational sensibilities, with relativism. It is common to label the newer generations as harboring a fear of venturing a definite statement. After all, how often should a coherently minded person need to note that something is similar to something rather than just being that something? The new like, then, is associated with hesitation. What we are seeing in like’s transformations today are just the latest chapters in a story that began with an ancient word that was supposed to mean “body.”īecause we think of like as meaning “akin to” or “similar to,” kids decorating every sentence or two with it seems like overuse. There is a lot more to it: It swims, as it were. Therefore, like is ever so much more than some isolated thing clinically described in a dictionary with a definition like “( preposition) ‘having the same characteristics or qualities as similar to.’” Think of a cold, limp, slimy squid splayed wet on a cutting board, its lifeless tentacles dribbling in coils, about to be sliced into calamari rings-in comparison to the brutally fleet, remorseless, dynamic creatures squid are when alive underwater- like as “( preposition). The new like is associated with hesitation. Dictionaries tell us it’s pronounced “like-MINE-did,” but I, for one, say “LIKE- minded” and have heard many others do so. But we still have likeminded, where we can easily perceive minded as having independent meaning.
Like all the rest synonym plus#
Likewise began as like plus a word, wise, which was different from the one meaning “smart when either a child or getting old.” This other wise meant “manner”: Likewise meant “similar in manner.” This wise disappeared as a word on its own, and so now we think of it as a suffix, as in clockwise and stepwise. Again, the pathway from saint-like to saint- ly is not hard to perceive. Technically, like yielded two suffixes, because - ly is also used with adjectives, as in portly and saintly. That historical process is especially clear in that there are still people who, colloquially, say slow-like, angry-like. To the extent that slowly means “in a slow fashion,” as in “with the quality of slowness,” it is easy (and correct) to imagine that slowly began as “slow-like,” with like gradually wearing away into a - ly suffix. Like has become a piece of grammar: It is the source of the suffix - ly. It was just that, step by step, the syllable lic, which to an Old English speaker meant “body,” came to mean, when uttered by people centuries later, “similar to”-and life went on. Of course, there were no days when these changes happened abruptly and became official. Gelic over time shortened to just lic, which became like. To an Old English speaker, the word that later became like was the word for, of all things, “body.” The word was lic, and lic was part of a word, gelic, that meant “with the body,” as in “with the body of,” which was a way of saying “similar to”-as in like. Even in its dictionary definition, like is the product of stark changes in meaning that no one would ever guess. But it takes on a different aspect when you consider it within this context of language being ever-evolving.įirst, let’s take like in just its traditional, accepted forms.
So deeply reviled, so hard on the ears of so many, so new, and with such an air of the unfinished, of insecurity and even dimness, the new like is hard to, well, love. It’s under this view of language-as something becoming rather than being, a film rather than a photo, in motion rather than at rest-that we should consider the way young people use (drum roll, please) like. There have been assorted changes in the grammar, but language has moved on, on that distant isle as everywhere else.
It is true that written Icelandic is quite similar to Old Norse, but the spoken language is quite different-Old Norse speakers would sound a tad extraterrestrial to modern Icelanders. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn’t sit still.
0 kommentar(er)
