American teenagers have taken the word "like" and slaughtered it into something all their own.
If you are a teenager, you might be saying, "This lady is, like, so ridiculous."
Well, there you go.
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WikiHow.com suggests you stop using "like" before adjectives and adverbs or to approximate. For example, never say, "She is, like, only 4 feet tall." Just say, "She is 4 feet tall."
There are only two correct usages of the word, according to wikiHow:
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- Similarity (This tastes just like my mom's cake).
- Enjoyment (I like this cake).
This week's question:
"How can we get our kids to break this bad habit and stop saying "like"?"
Read what the Woodstock-Towne Lake Patch Moms Council had to say, then add your own suggestions in the comment field below this article.
Leslie Olejnik: Honestly, until my 14-year-old daughter entered this year, I didn't hear the word "like" coming out of her mouth all that much. Now, I don't know what has happened to her speech. It is so annoying that I have even started counting how many times she will say "like" while talking to me. Unfortunately, it irritates her, and she storms off. I am truly at my wits' end with her. I must admit that I had the bad habit of saying "ya know" when I was her age. Lucky for me, my father put a stop to it. Every time I said "ya know," he offered this reply: "No, I don't know!"
Melissa Holder: I can remember using "like" and I even think I knew it was annoying. That is not the go-to word for my kids right now, but I'm sure it will be soon. I think "like" is an easy word to inject into sentences when you're trying to create dramatic effect or find a way to convey a conversation between two people. Plus, I think in the mind of the teenager, they think they are being clever in comparing two things, as in, "She was, like, fast as a cheetah." I think it's the make-up of the sentence. I don't know that we'd find anything odd if a teenager said, "She ran like a cheetah." When my daughter starts with "like," I'm sure I will resort to throwing the word right back at her until it's just not cool for her to use it anymore. I just hope it doesn't then become my habit.