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.
Reynolds does write that every woman she spoke to in the course of her research — she’s prone to such anecdotal statements — has at some point been made to feel badly about using the word. “‘Like’ must work against the pervasive myth that it is a meaningless word, a word that makes women sound dumb,” she writes. She emphasizes the point repeatedly: To hate on the word is to show a bias against women, youth and marginalized people. Maybe a book with a wider lens, in celebration of the language of those groups, might have felt more worthy of a full-length exploration.
But narrow though her focus is, Reynolds wants to explore only so much etymology. She can’t seem to decide whom she wants to represent to the reader: Is she a curious explorer, a translator or one of us?
Instead, she seems more interested in filling her book with personal anecdotes (letting the reader know she finds Pete Davidson attractive), cutesy formulations (“as the young say, a mood”) and interludes that stray far from her original thesis. The entire chapter devoted to the musician Ice Spice’s 2023 album, “Like…?,” might have been much shorter. There’s an extended section on the portrayal of women in the films “My Cousin Vinny,” “Legally Blonde,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “My Fair Lady” that could come from a different book of feminist film criticism. Passages about Kamala Harris and a controversy over a Mandarin phrase that’s a homonym for a racial slur make even less sense.
By the time Reynolds spends a few pages recounting the time she woke up in her apartment to a strange man asking for someone named Sarah, it’s hard not to agree with her therapist, who, Reynolds notes, often tells her to get to the point. If she is as concerned with language as she claims to be, then why waste so much of it?
The author’s big takeaway is that we all need to embrace change, that lovers of words should catch up to the times and let the way we speak to one another progress. “Language necessarily evolves with the culture — and culture, by and large, is driven forward by the young,” writes Reynolds. “The guardians of grammar are resistant to change, and teaching those old dogs any new tricks is difficult at best and impossible at worst.”
She concludes that there are other things these scolds should be worrying about. Sure, but, like, then why does she care so much?
LIKE: A History of the World’s Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word | By Megan C. Reynolds | HarperOne | 245 pp. | Paperback, $17.99
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