2020-10-30
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด L – Like – as if – like for – like to – like of
การใช้ภาษาอังกฤษ ที่ถือว่า ถูกต้อง นี้ เป็นไป ตามมาตรฐาน ของภาษา
การใช้ภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่กำหนดมาตฐาน ถือตามส่วนใหญ่ที่ใช้แต่ละท้องถิ่น
ความหมาย อาจยืดหยุ่น ขึ้นอยู่กับ ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค
Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง like = ‘LAHYK’
Dictionary.com
USAGE NOTE FOR LIKE
Like as a conjunction meaning “as, in the same way as”
(Many shoppers study the food ads like brokers study market reports)
or “as if” ( It looks like it will rain ) has been used for nearly 500 years and by many distinguished literary and intellectual figures. Since the mid-19th century there have been objections, often vehement, to these uses. Nevertheless, such uses are almost universal today in all but the most formal speech and writing. In extremely careful speech and in much formal writing, as, as if, and as though are more commonly used than like :
The commanding general accepted full responsibility for the incident, as any professional soldier would. Many of the Greenwich Village bohemians lived as if (or as though ) there were no tomorrow.
The strong strictures against the use of like as a conjunction have resulted in the occasional hypercorrect use of as as a preposition where like is idiomatic: She looks as a sympathetic person.
Like meaning “as if” is also standard in informal speech and writing with a small number of adjectives:
The crew worked like crazy (or like mad ) to finish the job on time.
BRITISH DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS FOR LIKE
USAGE FOR LIKE
The use of like to mean such as was formerly thought to be
undesirable in formal writing,
but has now become acceptable.
It was also thought that as rather than like should be used
to mean in the same way that,
but now both as and like are acceptable:
they hunt and catch fish as/like their ancestors used to.
The use of look like and seem like before a clause, although very common, is thought by many people to be incorrect or non-standard:
it looks as though he won't come (not it looks like he won't come)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Like vs. as: Usage Guide
Conjunction
Like has been used as a conjunction in ways similar to as since the 14th century. In the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries it was used in serious literature, but not often; in the 17th and 18th centuries it grew more frequent but less literary. It became markedly more frequent in literary use again in the 19th century. By mid-century it was coming under critical fire, but not from grammarians, oddly enough, who were wrangling over whether it could be called a preposition or not. There is no doubt that, after 600 years of use, conjunctive like is firmly established.
It has been used by many prestigious literary figures of the past, though perhaps not in their most elevated works; in modern use it may be found in literature, journalism, and scholarly writing.
While the present objection to it is perhaps more heated than rational, someone writing in a formal prose style may well prefer to use as, as if, such as, or an entirely different construction instead.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Usage Notes
Learning to Like 'Like'
People have complained about 'like' for decades.
Can a case be made for it?
What’s not to like about the word like?
The short answer to that question is "so much."
Like has been a particularly bountiful source of irritation for people who get annoyed by the language habits of other people: while most offending words, such as irregardless, find a single specialty and stick with it, like annoys people in two distinct ways.
Yet in each case, one can make an argument that like isn't so bad as one might assume. If you tend to get into arguments about the word like
—or if you simply want to know how lexicographers could possibly justify the word's use—read on.
People have been complaining about supposedly incorrect uses of 'like' for a long time.
But there's nothing wrong with using 'like' as a conjunction
—and the supposedly meaningless use of 'like' by young people is not really meaningless, nor is it limited to a particular age or gender.
Annoyance #1: Using Like As a Conjunction
In 1954, an advertising firm working for Winston cigarettes adopted a tried-and-tested method of getting their product noticed: they irritated people. They did this in a fashion so spectacularly evil, so ingeniously vile, that people are still talking about it today. Brace yourselves. Are you ready?
They took a word that many people thought should be an adverb, and they used it as a conjunction.
The 1950s were a different time, but the advertisement that resulted was one of the most famous ads of the 20th century: “Winston Tastes Good, Like a Cigarette Should.” Mass hysteria and outrage soon followed. The journalist Walter Cronkite, when given this advertising script to read on the air in between news broadcasts, refused—not because he was advertising a product that caused cancer, but because he didn't like the syntax. Instead, Cronkite promoted the carcinogenic product with the phrase "Winston tastes good, as a cigarette should."
Here's the interesting part:
like had been used as a conjunction in English since the 14th century.
It was uncommon, which may explain why the complaints about it don't appear until the late 18th century, but enough people employed the conjunctive like between 1800 and 1950 that we find a steady stream of language watchers cautioning against it:
Like has always been widely misused by the illiterate; lately it has been taken up by the knowing and the well-informed, who find it catchy or liberating, and who use it as though they were slumming.
—Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, 1959
Shorts are not acceptable dinner attire in most better-grade restaurants…. Similarly, the use of like as a conjunction is not acceptable in better-grade writing…
—Theodore Bernstein, The Careful Writer, 1965
The ad writer who dreamed up the Winston commercial should be jailed.
—Charles Kuralt, in Harper’s Dictionary of American Usage, 1975
In spite of these mid-century admonishments, people kept using like as a conjunction. In fact, the conjunctive like is now so prevalent that many people pay it no attention.
And why should they? Again, the conjunctive like has been in use for 600 years. It is firmly established. It has been used by many prestigious literary figures of the past, though perhaps not in their most elevated works; in modern use it may be found in literature, journalism, and scholarly writing. One may avoid it as a matter of preference, but one cannot deny its existence.
However, this does not mean that like has finished its assault upon the sanctity of our language. It has not.
Annoyance #2: Using Like When It Doesn't, Like, Mean Anything
Once people stopped getting upset about like as a conjunction, they found a new reason to dislike it: its use as a meaningless word by young people.
Fair enough. Except that this newfangled use of like is not restricted to the young—it has been found across all ages of English speakers—and it isn’t at all meaningless.
Linguists who study this use of like have identified numerous functions. When someone says “That has to be, like, the fiftieth time you’ve told me to not use like,” the word functions as an approximative adverb, and informs the listener that some estimate of quantity is included in the sentence. When that same person says “My mother was like, 'please don’t use like so much,’” like serves as a quotative compartmentalizer: something that indicates a portion of the sentence is quoting or paraphrasing another speaker.
Like is often found grazing at the beginning of sentences, in a position that is generally thought of as a discourse marker. A discourse marker is the word you use at the beginning of a sentence when you say "Well, I think that using like in that way makes you sound foolish." It serves a very similar role to the word at the beginning of the sentence uttered in response to your disapproval: "Like, that’s just your opinion."
A hundred years ago, some writers on language instructed writers to avoid well for many of the same reasons that people condemn like today. Ambrose Bierce, in his 1909 book Write it Right, referred to well as "a mere meaningless prelude to a sentence." But there was never any widespread outcry against discourse markers, largely because most people, writers on language included, did not know what they were. Unless you're planning a career in linguistics you needn't concern yourself overmuch with the subject, except to know that discourse markers are common, especially in speech, and that pretty much everybody uses them.
Like is not content-free and meaningless when used in these instances. It provides information, although that information may be subtle and difficult to parse. If you haven’t the patience to decipher whether you are hearing a quotative compartmentalizer or a discourse marker, take heart in the fact that like is serving another vitally important lexical role, and one which is quite easy to understand: it is giving millions of people something to complain about.
Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary
Like – as if
Since the 1950s, when it was especially associated with hipsters,
“like” as a sort of meaningless verbal hiccup has been common in speech. The earliest uses had a sort of sense to them in which “like” introduced feelings or perceptions which were then specified: “When I learned my poem had been rejected I was, like, devastated.”
However, “like” quickly migrated elsewhere in sentences: “I was like, just going down the road, when, like, I saw this cop, like, hiding behind the billboard.”
This habit has spread throughout American society, affecting people of all ages. Those who have the irritating “like” habit are usually unaware of it, even if they use it once or twice in every sentence: but if your job involves much speaking with others, it’s a habit worth breaking.
Recently young people have extended its uses by using “like” to introduce thoughts and speeches: “When he tells me his car broke down on the way to my party I’m like, ” I know you were with Cheryl because she told me so.” To be reacted to as a grown-up, avoid this pattern.
“As if” is generally preferred in formal writing over “like” in sentences
such as “the conductor looks as if he’s ready to begin the symphony.”
But in colloquial speech, “like” prevails, and when recording expressions such as “he spends money like it’s going out of style” it would be artificial to substitute “as if.”
And in expressions where the verb is implied rather than expressed,
“like” is standard rather than “as": “
she took to gymnastics like a duck to water.
I would like you to remember that saying
“I’d like for you to take out the garbage” is not formal English.
The “for” is unnecessary.
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expression
LIKE
In recent years, like has been used so increasingly for as or as if that this usage is now accepted as popular or informal in constructions formerly considered nonstandard.
When like precedes a noun that is not followed by a verb, its use is standard: “He talked like an expert.”
The use of like as a subordinating conjunction is not recommended, however, (He drank beer likeit was going out of style).
In standard usage, say as or as if in clauses of comparison: “You should do as tell you,” not “You should do like I tell you.”
No longer do you need to avoid like “like” you once did, but it is preferable to use it only in a prepositional sense.
In other situations, use as if, though, and as thoughnot only for correctness but for effective variety.
You will then speak as (not like) a good speaker should.
In recent years, like has become a filler, a throwaway word used constantly in the speech of many persons, especially young people: “You know, I want to, like I said, try to do better, but something always, like, get in the way.”
One can sympathize with the nervousness or ignorance that presumably causes this misuse and overuse, but one can also avoid the practice himself.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary,
lik′er, n.
usage: like 1 as a conjunction meaning “as, in the same way as”
(Many shoppers study the food ads like brokers study market reports)
or “as if” (It looks like it will rain) has been used for nearly 500 years and by many distinguished literary and intellectual figures. Since the mid-19th century there have been objections to these uses.
Nevertheless, such uses are almost universal today in all but the most formal speech and writing, in which as, as if, and as though are more commonly used than like:
The general accepted full responsibility for the incident, as any professional soldier would.
Many of the bohemians lived as if (or as though) there were no tomorrow.
The strong strictures against the use of like as a conjunction have resulted in the occasional hypercorrect use of as as a preposition where like is idiomatic: She looks as a sympathetic person. See also as.
Collins English Dictionary
Usage: The use of like to mean such as was formerly thought to be undesirable in formal writing, but has now become acceptable.
It was also thought that as rather than like should be used to mean in the same way that, but now both as and like are acceptable:
they hunt and catch fish as/like their ancestors used to.
The use of look like and seem like before a clause, although very common, is thought by many people to be incorrect or non-standard:
it looks as though he won't come (not it looks like he won't come)
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Usage Note:
They don't make them like they used to.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
As these familiar examples show, like is often used as a conjunction meaning "as" or "as if," particularly in speech.
While writers since Chaucer's time have used like as a conjunction, the usage today has a somewhat informal or conversational flavor.
Language critics and writing handbooks have condemned the conjunctive use of like for more than a century, and in accordance with this tradition, like is usually edited out of more formal prose.
This is easy enough to do, since as and as if stand as synonyms: Sales of new models rose as (not like) we expected them to. He ran as if (not like) his life depended on it.
Like is acceptable at all levels as a conjunction when used with verbs
such as feel, look, seem, sound, and taste:
It looks like we are in for a rough winter.
Constructions in which the verb is not expressed,
such as He took to politics like a duck to water, are also acceptable, especially since in these cases like can be viewed as a preposition. See Usage Notes at as1, together.
Our Living Language Along with be all and go, the construction combining be and like has become a common way of introducing quotations in informal conversation, especially among younger people:
"So I'm like, 'Let's get out of here!'"
As with go, this use of like can also announce a brief imitation of another person's behavior, often elaborated with facial expressions and gestures.
It can also summarize a past attitude or reaction (instead of presenting direct speech).
If a woman says "I'm like, 'Get lost buddy!'" she may or may not have used those actual words to tell the offending man off.
In fact, she may not have said anything to him but instead may be summarizing her attitude at the time by stating what she might have said, had she chosen to speak. See Note at go1
like (līk) also liked (līkt)
aux.v. Chiefly Southern US
Used with a past infinitive or with to and a simple past form to indicate being just on the point of or coming near to having done something in the past:
"I like to a split a gut laughin'." "It seemed as how nobody had thought about measurin' the width of the bridge's openin', and we like to didn't make it through" (Dictionary of American Regional English).
Our Living Language In certain Southern varieties of American English there are two grammatically distinct usages of the word like to mean "was on the verge of."
In both, either like or liked is possible.
In the first, the word is followed by a past infinitive: We like (or liked) to have drowned. The ancestor of this construction was probably the adjective like in the sense "likely, on the verge of,"
as in She's like to get married again. The adjective was reinterpreted by some speakers as a verb, and since like to and liked to are indistinguishable in normal speech, the past tense came to be marked on the following infinitive for clarity.
From this developed a second way of expressing the same concept: the use of like to with a following finite past tense verb form,
as in I like to died when I saw that. This construction appears odd at first because it ostensibly contains an ungrammatical infinitive, to died, but that is not the case at all.
What has happened is that like to here has been reinterpreted as an adverb meaning almost. In fact, it is quite common to see the phrase spelled as a single word, in the pronunciation spelling liketa.
