"like" and "as if"

Wilson Gray wilson.gray at RCN.COM
Fri Jun 24 04:38:51 UTC 2005


On Jun 23, 2005, at 9:31 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "like" and "as if"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 16:56:55 -0700, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>> Back in those days, the introductory "like" was customarily followed
>> by
>> a comma, as there was almost always a slight pause between it and what
>> followed.  Of course,  _Mojo Navigator_ may have been less
>> punctilious.
>
> Like, I think the comma is/was most often used when introducing a
> sentence-initial clause, but like if it's mid-sentential then the comma
> would often be dropped.
>
> Mid-sentential examples from _Mojo Navigator_:
>
> -----
> At ten o'clock they started to serve drinks and the older crowd would
> come
> in, and like they’re white-collar drunks and all...a bad scene.
> ("Big Brother & the Holding Company", Sep. 1966)
> -----
> The only other blues clubs are in the South Side, and like you just
> don't
> go down there unless you have a spade

FWIW, Richie Havens is the only spade that I've ever heard use the word
"spade" to mean "spade": "I bet you didn't know that there were spade
cowboys, did you?" A rhetorical question asked on a TV show as he was
about to sing some Western ditty.

Then there was the time that I asked a friend at UC Davis please not to
refer to spades as "spades," especially when she was talking to a
spade, at least. She replied that, at her no-doubt lily-white high
school in her no-doubt lily-white town somewhere in the
Northern-California wine country, it was customary to refer to spades
as "spades." After pondering this for over 35 years, I still haven't
been able to winkle out the logical connection between my request and
her reply to it. Clearly, talking to her was like talking to a wall, to
coin a phrase. She just didn't get it.

-Wilson Gray

>  friend with you.
> ("Big Brother & the Holding Company", Sep. 1966)
> -----
> I always used to sip my mother's beer, so like I started playin' right
> then and just listened to all the different music around the country.
> ("Country Joe and the Fish", 22 Nov. 1966)
> -----
>
> Here's commaless "like" in both initial and medial position:
>
> -----
> Like you go to the Avalon now and you'll see... it used to be like
> just a
> small group of people in front that were listening and then like 90% of
> the audience was running around and dancing...and now like almost the
> whole auditorium is covered with sitting people, and it's, I think,
> considered uncool to freak out.
> ("Interview with the Doors", Aug. 1967)
> -----
>
> But elsewhere in the same article initial "like" gets a comma:
>
> -----
> Like, they're really good musicians, and they're tight, but so's Wilson
> Pickett, you know?
> ("Interview with the Doors", Aug. 1967)
> -----
>
> I think the magazine staff punctuated however they, like, liked.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>



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