Rosie O’Donnell appeared recently on the Tonight Show. As an unbelievably wealthy and influential woman who gets listened to, she rattled off some information about other celebrities.
     Thanks to a maddening mannerism of hers, I cannot remember the subject matter. What I paid attention to–and tallied–was “like.”

     “Like” can be more than one part of speech, but the way it’s being used, not only by O’Donnell but possibly the entire planet, would classify it more as a filler than a meaningful word.
     “Like” is commonly used to introduce dialogue. Years back, people would say, “I felt bad over the rejection and told her, ‘I never want to see you again.’” Today, that sentence is more likely to run this way: “And after that rejection, I’m like, ‘I never want to see her again.’”
     Millions of users of this kind of locution choose “like” in place of “I said something like.” A few years ago, a columnist for the Washington Post, Malcolm Gladwell, explained that the use of “like” as an introducer of a direct quote was restricted to teenaged girls who wear braces and usually are named Jennifer, who hang around in malls and whose parlance consists of, “And I’m like Wow. Why do I even hang around with that creep?” The context generally deals with one’s regret over a bad choice and with self-reproach. The columnist who singled out the teenaged mall-dwelling, braces-wearing Jennifers was correct, for a while. Listen in on a conversation between two or three Jennifers and it’ll be just a few seconds before one of them describes her latest crush with, “And I was like ‘Wow!’”
     Now the use of “like” applies equally to boys—and men too. Like just three minutes of any talk show will assure you that “like” is an equal-opportunity solecism.
     “Like” has other functions, in addition to its declining meaning as a comparison or a verb indicating preference. People still correctly say, “Your car runs like a cement mixer,” and “I like the Raiders.” But the other uses outnumber the classical uses.
     People use “like” to soften the impact of a request, as a hedge. The son will ask, “Dad, is it okay if I, like, borrow the car?” That leaves an opening for Dad to say no. People also use “like” as a buffered comparison designed to be inoffensive. In that sense, we hear people say, “That’s like a shaggy jacket.” That context tells the wearer that the jacket soon will be shaggy if not mended, but so far, the jacket’s all right.
     “Like” also functions as an intensifier. If the meaning is clear, and you take each word at face value, “like” can toughen it. One can say, “That teacher is strict,” and mean merely that he or she tolerates no misbehavior in class. But by inserting “like,” as in “That teacher is—like—mean,” the meaning is now that misbehavior will result in being suspended from the ceiling by the thumbs, or even worse, being assigned an essay on “How I spent my summer vacation.”
     Still another use of “like,” heard only among people over 40, serves as a way of easing into a conversation. The Beatniks of the ‘50s customarily started every sentence with “Like man . . .” And that makes any conversation relevant. Often the full sentence was, “Like man, I’m feeling no pain.” Try it. Approach anyone (women too) with the words “like man,” and you’re free to pursue any conversation, whether it be astrological (What’s your sign?), meteorological (Is it hot enough for you?), geographical (Where you from?) or behavioral (What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?)
     Last week radio personality-psychologist Dr. Laura Schlesinger was fielding a call from a teenaged Jennifer whose parlance went something like this: “I like broke up with my boyfriend like the other day. You don’t know what it’s like, like to feel so much, like, pain.” Schlesinger’s order was to provide the information without one utterance of “like.” The girl did fine for about a minute, but, like, the torrent of “likes” eventually came through.
     Regrettably, in my hearing (but not listening to) of Rosie O’Donnell, I violated a commandment that reads: “Thou shalt listen to the message and forget the little annoyances.” My behavior is similar to that of the English teacher who overlooks an otherwise brilliant treatise because of the writer’s penmanship or habit of circling the dots in her “i’s.” Or the art teacher who assigns a low grade to a pupil who showed imagination but was unable to keep things between the lines.
     Trying to hone the spoken language in a third decade of teaching speech, I’d often come home discouraged and asked my wife, “Why am I like still teaching?”
     The imprecise overuse of words such as “like” can lead to a word inflation, in which words lose their potency. We would hope that in the event of earth-shaking information, people don’t merely tune out the speaker because of strange mannerisms.
     That would be like regrettable.