It's Like, "Like"

English is, like, a moving target.

During the 1980s and well on into the 90s, a certain word took on a like of its own. I didn’t grow up listening to Frank Zappa, so I missed out on the hit song Valley Girl, where his 14-year-old daughter Moon uses the words like, totally, and even bitchin’ as a part of her casual vernacular.

While Valley Girl lit the fuse, Jeff Spicoli was probably my first experience with a surfer bro motif, the sibling to the Valley Girl dialect. Spicoli only uses the word like as a placeholder a few times in the movie, but the pairing with his stoner mindset and way of life is important and iconic.

…so, like, when Jefferson went before the people what he was saying was, ‘Hey, we left this place in England because it was bogus…

Incidentally, I had access to Fast Times on LaserDisc during the mid-80s. I may have picked up more than my share of dialectal quirks from this film.

Still, this was nothing as compared to Wayne’s World. The natural anchor point here is 1992 when the movie was released—Bohemian Rhapsody, anyone?—but the real origin for me is their first SNL skit from 1989. Garth opens:

Okay, like, welcome to ‘Wayne’s World’!

Wayne and Garth aren’t from California, so that’s notable too. The dialect had spread far and wide by the early 90s, well outside of the West Coast and into middle and high schools, like, all over the US. Wayne’s World was both a symptom and a vector.

Many linguists point to Clueless as the capstone of this saga. Up until 1995, it felt like you didn’t really have permission to, like, use like like that. This film showed what appeared to be a typical, flat valley-girl trope who defies expectations to ultimately reveal a highly intelligent and empathetic person we come to appreciate and admire by the end of the film. Her rise and the rise of the word like in popular conversation seem somehow tied together.

This is, like, only one part of the story, of course. Like as a placeholder goes way, way back—anyone in the comments want to take it from here?