And the award for most F-bombs in a movie goes to …

In her odd, rambling acceptance speech at the Golden Globes last night, after winning her best supporting actress award, Jacqueline Bisset let the word shit slip right out of her mouth — and, it seems, right past the TV censors. Bad bleeping, NBC. You can see the full cringe-inducing speech right here.

We’re not that used to hearing profanities on national network television, since its censorship process is usually pretty efficient. But in the movies — especially in the last three or four decades — it’s become a case of almost anything goes. Fuck, according to Wikipedia, is thought to be the taboo word used most in American film — and boy does it get used.

One movie that’s tipped to pick up a respectable handful of awards this season is Wolf of Wall Street. But it’s already landed itself a damned fine and dubious distinction: it has set the record for the most 4-letter F-words uttered in a single movie (well, apart from the 2005 documentary Fuck, whose subject matter allowed it to take a big fat helping of Hollywood’s favorite profanity). 506 F-bombs in the 179-minute comedy: that’s what Wolf notched up, pushing out 1999’s Summer of Sam, the previous record-holder with a mere 435 such bleepers.

According to Wikipedia, there are at least 107 English-language movies* — and possibly more — that feature the word fuck or one of its derivatives at least 150 times in their screenplays. That’s a lot of friggin’ effing. Scarface, from 1983, is the earliest movie to have entered this distinguished category, in 1983, with 170 occurrences; Platoon joined the list a few years later in ’86 with 159. Wolf is going to be hard to beat, with its incidence rate of 2.83 F-bombs a minute, although 1997’s Nil By Mouth managed to F— By Mouth some 3.34 p.m. …

Here are a few more fabulous factoids, courtesy Wikipedia, about the F-word and its more mild-mannered S-cousin invading our big and small screens with ferocious frequency:

“It Hits the Fan”, an episode of South Park, used the word shit 162 times in 23 minutes
Madonna’s appearance on David Letterman’s show in March 1994 featured the entertainer using the word fuck 14 times, making the episode the most censored in American network television talk-show history; it also resulted in some of the highest ratings of Letterman’s late-night career.
In the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Steve Martin’s character rants at a car rental clerk, uttering the word fuck or fucking 18 times in a little more than 40 seconds.
In an episode of The Wire called “Old Cases”, the word fuck is used 38 times in 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Fuck and its derivatives are the only words spoken in the scene.

See an earlier Glossophilia post about the sometimes ambiguous and downright silly content advisories that try and protect us and our children from these and other eyebrow-raising utterances.

* that’s non-pornographic movies, to be specific

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Jan 10)

Words and language in the news during the week ending Jan 10: a fading dialect; a strange code with Mafia ties; a new trend in South Korean baby-naming; “strategic sloppiness” in professional communications; a congressman with a punctuation plan; and more …

* * *

Missouri’s paw-paw French language dialect is fading into silence; Al Jazeera has the story.

* * *

Police in Italy say they have deciphered a mysterious coded text that appears to reveal the details of a secretive mafia initiation process, according to a BBC report.

* * *

Is “strategic sloppiness” a new way of communicating professionally? According to a piece in Linked In Today, it is. New York magazine writer Kevin Roose explains how spelling mistakes and bad e-mail etiquette can help you get ahead.

* * *

The Los Angeles Times asked the question “Does grammar matter?” Read the article to discover the paper’s verdict …

* * *

“Yahoo malware creates Bitcoin botnet” was one of the BBC News headlines today. How 21st-century is that?

* * *

Roll Call describes how Congressman Jared Polis, the Colorado Democrat, has a plan to streamline overly worded thoughts — with tildes.

* * *

Parents in South Korea are ignoring traditions and choosing baby names that are easy for foreigners to pronounce. Arirang News, a South Korean broadcaster, says names that are easier to pronounce in English are gaining popularity. The BBC gives more detail.

You say soda, I say pop; you say soda water, I say club soda; what the fizz?

If an Englishman asks you for a soda, he most probably means, specifically, soda water, or what his friend across the ocean might refer to as a club soda. But an American asking for a soda likely has another idea in mind: on these shores it usually indicates any sort of carbonated soft drink, whether it be a Pepsi, ginger ale, 7-Up, or — as the Brits might generalize — a “fizzy drink”.

But what’s the difference between British soda water and “fizzy water” (as the Brits would say when I was younger — now more often and elegantly referred to as “sparkling water”) or “seltzer”, as the Americans usually name their fizzy H2O?

In the UK, soda water contains bicarbonate of soda, which gives it a specific flavor and differentiates it from plain carbonated or sparkling water (or seltzer), making it popular as a mixer in drinks like whisky and soda or Campari soda.

In the U.S., carbonated water was known as soda water until the Second World War because of the sodium salts added as flavoring and acidity regulators to mimic the taste of natural mineral water. In the ’30s, during the Depression, it was sometimes called “two cents plain”, being the cheapest drink offered at soda fountains. The names sparkling water and seltzer water flourished during the ’50s, with the latter being a classic “genericized brand name”, much like the modern generic kleenex, hoover and biro, which all originated as trademarked names. Seltzer derives from the German town Selters, renowned for its mineral springs from which naturally carbonated water has been commercially bottled and shipped since the 18th century. Seltzer water doesn’t usually have added salts, whereas the American club soda (another brand-name-turned-generic) still often retains sodium salts, making it more akin to the British soda water. However, seltzer or seltzer water isn’t used — or even really known — in Britain and most Commonwealth countries.

Nowadays in the U.S., soda has come to mean any type of sweetened, carbonated soft drink (with soft drinks so called — across standard English — to contrast them with “hard” or alcoholic drinks). The Online Etymology Dictionary gives this potted history of the word. “Soda meaning “carbonated water” is first recorded 1834, a shortening of soda water (1802) ‘water into which carbonic acid has been forced under pressure.’ ‘It rarely contains soda in any form; but the name originally applied when sodium carbonate was contained in it has been retained’ [Century Dictionary, 1902]. Since 19c. typically flavored and sweetened with syrups. First record of soda pop is from 1863, and the most frequent modern use of the word is as a shortening of this or other terms for ‘flavored, sweetened soda water’.”

However, just to confuse matters even further: the name for fizzy soft drinks in the States varies by region. Soda and pop are the two most common American names for this broad category of beverage, but there are others, including soda pop, the British fizzy drink, and even coke, which is used generically in the South. And the word Americans choose to name their fizzies is most associated with their geographic origin or location, rather than their age, race or socio-economic status. Go fizz.

Soda is most common on the East and West Coasts, as well as in St. Louis and Hawaii. Pop tends to be the name of choice in the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, pop meaning “flavored carbonated beverage” dates back to 1812, and was onomatopoeic in its origin. Robert Southey in a letter of that year described his “new manufactory of a nectar, between soda-water and ginger-beer, and called pop, because ‘pop goes the cork’ when it is drawn.” In the South, coke (or cola) is used generically to name any type of soft drink—not just colas (for which coke is a common nickname) or their most famous brand representatives, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The reason for this is quite possibly that Coca-Cola’s headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, a southern state. Coke is also heard generically in neighbors of the southern states, such as New Mexico and Southern Indiana, as well as in specific areas like Trinity County, California and White Pine County in Nevada.

Popvssoda.com has published a map of the U.S. showing the generic names for soft drinks by county.

If you want further facts on this fabulously fizzy phenomenon, here’s Wikipedia‘s list of brand names of soft drinks listed by their country of origin. Aren’t you dying to know what exactly Pritty, Juizee Pop, Pschitt, Battery and Semtex (sic) are — and where they are drunk?

You were fired, or you GOT fired?

When something happens to us and we’re reporting that action in a passive (“I was eaten alive”) rather than active (“they ate me alive”) sense, we’re usually content to use the verb “to be”, with whatever conjugation is called for: “I was taken”, “they were scolded”, “we’re going to be enlightened”. It’s a tense or form that tends to be preferred when we’re focussing on what has been done to the thing or person in question rather than on whoever or whatever performed the action — or when the agent of the action is unknown or simply unimportant.

But increasingly, at least colloquially, we’re reaching for the verb “to get” when using the passive sense — and especially when something especially bad or good is happening to the subject and when that subject is a person. When Donald Trump points his finger at you symbolically, you’re perhaps more likely to exclaim “I got fired!” than to declare the more neutral “I was fired”. “She got screwed over” packs more of a proverbial punch than the gentler “she was screwed over”; similarly, to say that “he got promoted” or that “she got seduced” puts more emphasis on the animate subject and on the positive action, despite it being expressed in the passive voice.

According to Arika Okrent, in her article “Four Changes to English So Subtle We Hardly Notice They’re Happening” in The Week (June 27, 2013), “the get-passive goes back at least 300 years, but it has been on a rapid rise during the past 50 years. It is strongly associated with situations which are bad news for the subject — getting fired, getting robbed — but also situations that give some kind of benefit. … However, the restrictions on its use may be relaxing over time and get-passives could get a whole lot bigger.”

In Junichi Toyota’s Diachronic Change in the English Passive, he makes an important observation, according to Rose Rittenhouse’s review of the book, arguing “that the get-passive overwhelmingly focuses on an animate subject that is more involved in the action affecting it.” Clarifying this theory in some detail, Anja Wanner’s book Deconstructing the English Passive outlines several restrictions or identifying qualities of the get-passive, as discovered and described by various linguists in the last few decades:

“The get-passive receives a more dynamic interpretation than the be-passive (Quirk et al., 1985)”
“The get-passive often has adversative — and sometimes beneficial — interpretation (Chappell, 1980; Carter and McCarthy, 1999), and reflects the speaker’s attitude towards the event (Lakoff, 1971). This characteristic of the get-passive has been traced back to its very beginning in the 17th century (Givon and Yang, 1994).”
“The subject of the get-passive is generally animate and, although underlyingly the object of the verb, is interpreted as somehow responsible for the action (Arce-Arenales, Axelrod and Fox, 1994; Givon and Yang, 1994; Huddleston and Pullum 2004). In a sentence like Mary got shot on purpose, Mary is not the agent of shot, but she is considered to be somehow responsible for the event (having brought the event about through some action of hers). This is also known as the “secondary agent” reading (Roeper, 1987).”
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly for some, “the get-passive is used more often in American than in British English (Sussex 1982) and is also acquired earlier in American English than in British English (Meints 2003).”

It’s interesting that our growing tendency (by using the get-passive with more frequency — especially in America) seems to be turning the passive back into a more active voice, perhaps suggesting that the latter is a more natural expression and reflection of the way we perceive and view our world, and that the passive is losing its place in the language. If many linguists and style guides had their way, we would steer clear of the passive voice altogether: it’s been widely discouraged for some time now. In 1926 Fowler advised against it, claiming that doing so “sometimes leads to bad grammar, false idiom, or clumsiness.” As Thomas Hobbes said in 2001, “In general, the passive voice should be avoided unless there is good reason to use it, for example, in this sentence, which focuses on ‘the passive voice’.” (The Blackwell Guide to the Modern Philosophers).

Got milk? Got the get-passive?

Catching zeds, and the language of slumber

When and why did we start using zzz to refer to sleep? How long have we been catching zeds (or what Yanks call zees), and since when have we been getting our 40 winks?

The OED lists one definition of z (“usually repeated”) as “used to represent the sound of buzzing or snoring”, and it was indeed a case of onomatopoeia that first linked the letter z — or multiple zzzzzzs — to sleeping by approximating the sound of snoring. The American Dialect Society’s Dialect Notes, published in 1918, lists “z-z-z” as “the sound of whispering or snoring, and 1919’s Boy’s Life, the Boy Scouts’ yearbook, gives “Z-z-z-z-z-z-z” as the title of a joke about that most supersonic of sleep sounds. This onomatopoeic use of z’s — which later came to signify, more generally, the state of slumber — was popularized by its use in early comic strips and comic books, for example in Schulz’s “Peanuts” cartoon series. In fact, a single Z in a speech bubble is enough nowadays to indicate that a character is asleep, and this is no longer confined to just the English language: as Wikipedia explains, “Originally, the resemblance between the ‘z’ sound and that of a snore seemed exclusive to the English language, but the spread of American comics has made it a frequent feature in other countries. An exception to this is in Japanese manga, where the usual symbol for sleep is a large bubble coming out of the character’s nose.”

And why “40 winks”, meaning a short sleep or nap? It’s not clear where or when the actual expression originated, but the number 40 is known to have been used historically to signify a great or indefinite number — hence the Biblical “40 days and 40 nights” and other numerous references; as argued in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,” edited by James Orr in 1915, “it may have originated, partly at any rate, in the idea that 40 years constituted a generation or the period at the end of which a man attains maturity, an idea common, it would seem, to the Greeks, the Israelites, and the Arabs.” Add the informal meaning of wink as a very short period of time, especially in the context of lack of sleep (as in, not being able to “sleep a wink”), and suddenly “40 winks” makes perfect sense. The Online Etymology Dictionary attests the expression “40 winks” from 1821, and speculates that its early use might have been associated with, and perhaps coined by, the eccentric English lifestyle reformer William Kitchiner M.D. (1775-1827).

Other colloquial words and expressions for slumber are cat nap (noun), to doze or doze off (verb), to nod off (v), shut-eye (n), snooze (v & n), and going bo-bos. Cockney Rhyming Slang gives us soot (Sooty and Sweep = sleep) and Bo Peep — the latter possibly giving rise to the suggestion, cooed persuasively and desperately to British babies, of “going bo-bos”…

“Goodnight, sleep tight, and don’t let the bed-bugs bite.” Tight in this context refers not, as some contend, to ropes tied tautly across early bedsteads, but instead to the adverb tightly, defined by the OED as “soundly, properly, well; effectively”; indeed, that dictionary’s first definition of tight itself is “soundly, roundly; = TIGHTLY 1. Now chiefly in colloq. phr. (good night) sleep tight, a conventional (rhyming) formula used when parting for the night or at bedtime.” The bed-bugs can probably speak for themselves.

To Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.
— by John Keats

Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne ?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !
and surely I’ll buy mine !
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine ;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine^† ;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand my trusty friend !
And give me a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

Auld Lang Syne is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk tune. Soon after the song was penned, it became a Scottish custom to sing it on New Year’s Eve (or what the Scots call “Hogmanay”) — a tradition that soon spread to other parts of the British Isles. Then, as the Scots and Brits started to emigrate around the world, so the song and the tradition travelled internationally. “Auld Lang Syne” translates into English as “old long since” or, more colloquially, “long long ago”, “days gone by” or “old times”. So the first line of the chorus — “For auld lang syne” — can be loosely translated as “for (the sake of) old times”, and indeed those words are often added to the final line of the chorus (ie. “for the sake of auld lang syne”) for this reason.

Here’s a rousing rendition of the song in the final scene of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart.

And here is Burns’s original poem:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?

CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie’s a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

— by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” forms part of In Memoriam, Tennyson’s elegy to his sister’s fiance, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died at the age of 22. On the last day of every year in Sweden, the poem is recited — in a loose translation — to commemorate the year’s end. It’s a tradition that dates back to 1897 when the young Swedish actor Anders de Wahl was invited to read the poem at Sweden’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration at Skansen in Stockholm. De Wahl recited the poem each year until until his death in 1956, and the tradition continues to this day.

Glossophilia’s year-end mega-list of word lists

He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice … And Santa’s not the only one doing it. List-making has become the world’s favorite past-time — especially as the year draws to a close — and Glossophilia isn’t going to miss out on the fun. Here’s a compilation of 24 of the year’s best word lists, each with a couple of notable examples/entrants to make you click. Thanks to the kings of lists, Buzzfeed and mentalfloss, for supplying most of them. Enjoy!

* * *

Top 8 (real) misspellings from 2013
Prozaic, impeckable

‘Tis and 10 other fun proclitic words
‘Twas, ’twill, th’art …

12 old words that survived by getting fossilized in idioms
kith, umbrage

A wordnado of words in 2013 (from the New York Times)
Bae, cronut

The 10 most 2013 words
sequestration, surveillance

6 grammar points to watch out for in Christmas songs
“You better watch out, you better not cry …”

The Independent’s 2013’s words of the year
cybernat, fracker

11 wonderful winter weather terms
Hoarfrost, albedo

Merriam-Webster’s Year in Words, 2013
knaidel, indemnify

15 fun phrases that were popularized during Prohibition
Jake walk, teetolater, and hooch

9 words that genuinely might be added to the Oxford English Dictionary
legsie, dosant

What we liked in 2013: words (from The Guardian)
listicle

10 Latin phrases people pretend to understand
Habeus corpus, quid pro quo

The words that popped in 2013 (from the Wall Street Journal)
subtweet, doge

15 delightful flapper-era words for ‘awesome’

The fly’s thighs, the sardine’s whiskers, the clam’s cuticle

12 words and phrases that were popularized in the funny pages
wimpy, worrywort

15 words etymologically inspired by animals
tyke, hobby and hackneyed

11 word of the year candidates everyone forgot immediately
deleb, blamestorm

The last words of 17 historical figures
“That’s very obvious.”

26 of Noah Webster’s spelling changes that didn’t catch on
soop for soup, tung for tongue

11 sexting acronyms from the 1930s
EGYPT, ENGLAND and VENICE

15 wonderful words for delightful experiences
suaviloquence, petrichor

15 more excellent Victorian slang words you should be using
nurse the hoe-handle, raked fore and aft

11 words for people who hate certain things
misopogonist, misapodysist

12 of the highest-scoring Scrabble words
cazique, jukebox

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Dec 27)

As 2013 draws to a close, we’ve got lots to celebrate about it — like the use of the word selfie, and other words of the year. The Russians haven’t just banned discussions about homosexuality: they also won’t let anyone mention obscene terms for genitals or women of easy virtue. The Church gave a nod to Mexican languages; the Finns don’t like the way iPhone is spelled. And we learned some important new facts: like the words for horse-eating, 3-letter extensions to words in Scrabble, and French kissing in France …

* * *

What do selfies, Suarez and Seamus Heaney have in common? The same as Bieber, bitcoins and Breaking Bad . . . They all appeared in “top words of 2013” lists. “PRIVACY. Selfie. Geek. Science. Four dictionary publishers each selected one of those words as its word of the year for 2013. But it’s tough to catalog the preoccupations of the year in a single word. There were many flying around that seemed to capture a moment, an emotion, a thought, a new way of doing or describing things, or the larger zeitgeist. Some were new, some not so new, but they all seemed to say something about the times. Here are a few …”, the New York Times reported …

Time magazine looked more closely into Oxford’s actual word of the year, which is captured — literally — in James Franco’s pic above …

* * *

The Russian media has been given four categories of swear words that must never appear either in articles or in readers’ comments, in print or online. Newspapers and websites that fail to comply could lose their licenses. The list of unprintable words was compiled by Roskomnadzor (Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications) and among the categories of banned words are “obscene terms for a woman of easy virtue”. RT has the story.

* * *

Mexico’s indigenous languages get a nod from the Church. The BBC has the story …

* * *

According to Cult of Mac, Finland’s linguistic authorities — the Institute for the Languages of Finland, which rules on correct spellings, loan words and usages as the Finnish, Swedish, Romani and Sami languages develop — has decreed that the correct Finnish usage of iPhone is not iPhone, but rather Iphone or I-phone. You tell ’em, Finland.

* * *

Finally, thanks to the BBC’s list of “100 things we didn’t know last year”, we now know 22 fun facts about words and language that we didn’t know in 2012:

Horse-eating is called Hippophagy.

“Russian flu” got its name because of the Cold War rather than because it originated in Russia.

William is the surname that has decreased the most since 1901.

Haribos are so-named because of founder Hans Riegel and his hometown Bonn.

South Africa was included in the BRICS as it made for a better acronym than Nigeria.

“Lucifer” and “.” (full stop) are banned baby names in New Zealand.

Birmingham City Council blocks the word “commie” from incoming email.

Using “don’t” and “won’t” correctly in online dating messages boosts response rates by more than a third.

The French call a walkie-talkie a talkie-walkie.

Until recently the US Navy had a requirement that all official messages be sent in capital letters.

“God’s bones” was the sweariest expression in medieval times.

The French had no official word for French kissing… until now. It’s “galocher”.

Ampersand was once an actual letter which followed the letter Z in the Latin alphabet.

The first recorded incorrect use of the word “literally” was in 1769.

Polyamorous people have invented a word to indicate the opposite feeling of jealousy – compersion.

Glaswegians are starting to sound like Cockneys because of EastEnders.

In Scrabble, a Benjamin is a three-letter extension to the front of a five-letter word.

The word “get” went out of fashion in books between 1940 and the 1960s.

Amazon’s original name was to be Relentless – and the URL relentless.com still redirects to the company website.

John Wayne coined the phrase “the Big C” to avoid naming cancer.

Americans pronounce gifs as “jifs”.

A long-term lover is known as a “small house” in Zimbabwe.

The ubiquity of like

Don’t you just, like, love it when your witty Facebook post gets lots of likes? Like, doesn’t it make you feel like a social media king, and like everyone likes you? And did you happen to cringe reading that last clause: “make you feel like everyone likes you?”?

A few years ago in Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens examined, like, the unstoppable onslaught of like. “Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of “like” has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.” With its modern ubiquity, it now acts as not just a sentence filler but also as a colloquial quotative (“he was like ‘no way!'”), a discourse particle, an emphatic, a hedge, and a speech disfluency.

But let’s not, like, spoil the proverbial child by giving it too much ink here, considering how much love — or like — like already gets on the tongues and keyboards of millennials. I’m not going to, like, dwell on the use of like as any of the above, nor on its new role as a quantifiable measure of one’s online popularity. I’d rather look at its use as a subordinating conjunction — ie. before a verbal clause when “as if” or “as though” are considered either preferable or mandatory, depending on how much of a purist you are.

But before we go there, I did find it fascinating to learn from the Online Etymology Dictionary that the word like has been used as a “postponed filler (“going really fast, like”)” from 1778: it’s like really old — 18th-century old. As a presumed emphatic (“going, like, really fast”) it dates from 1950, introduced originally in counterculture slang and bop talk. And as a colloquial adverb it has a long and illustrious history (“He was like to lose his life in the one [battle] and his liberty in the other [capture], but there was none of his money at stake in either,” from Charles MacFarlane and Thomas Napier Thomson’s Comprehensive History of England published in 1792). So like‘s ubiquity is not as modern a phenomenon as many might think …

Now back to grammar and the modern day. It used to be that like had just two official roles in linguistic life (not counting the fillers and emphatics as described above): 1) as a verb (“I like this dessert”) and 2) as a preposition for comparisons (“that car is like a house”). But increasingly — and somewhat controversially — it has come to be used as a subordinating conjunction, preceding a verbal clause when “as” (“as if”, “as though”, “as it should”) has been historically prescribed. “I feel as though I’m going to be sick” will more likely be phrased nowadays as “I feel like I’m going to be sick”.

Wikipedia describes how this distinction first made its way into many people’s consciousness back in 1954, “when a famous ad campaign for Winston cigarettes introduced the slogan ‘Winston tastes good — like a cigarette should.’ The slogan was criticized for its usage by prescriptivists, the ‘as’ construction being considered more proper. Winston countered with another ad, featuring a woman with greying hair in a bun who insists that it ought to be ‘Winston tastes good as a cigarette should’ and is shouted down by happy cigarette smokers asking ‘What do you want — good grammar or good taste?'”

To 21st-century ears, like as a conjunction is no longer considered “bad grammar” as it obviously seemed to many in the Mad Men era — although to some purists (including myself), it still grates. For a word that has such positive connotations, it’s one that seems to commit some of the most egregious of linguistic crimes in its various guises. You could like argue that it’s become like the bad boy of the English language. And if you like like this post, please would you like like it on Facebook?