like
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: līk
ipa: /laɪ̯k/
ipa: /læ̙ːk/
ipa: /lɑːk/
ipa: /lɔɪ̯k/
ipa: /lʌɪk/
ipa: [ləi̯k]
rhymes: -aɪk
Forms: form: more like
form: most like
form: lak
Etymology: Adjective from Middle English lik, lyk, lich, like, from Old English ġelīċ by shortening, influenced by Old Norse líkr, glíkr; both from Proto-Germanic *galīkaz (“like, similar, same”). Related to alike; more distantly, with lich and -ly. Cognate with West Frisian like (“like; as”), Saterland Frisian gliek (“like”), Danish lig (“alike”), Dutch gelijk (“like, alike”), German gleich (“equal, like”), Icelandic líkur (“alike, like, similar”), Norwegian lik (“like, alike”) Swedish lik (“like, similar”)
Adverb from Middle English like, lyke, liche, lyche, from Old English ġelīċe (“likewise, also, as, in like manner, similarly”) and Old Norse líka (“also, likewise”); both from Proto-Germanic *galīkê, from Proto-Germanic *galīkaz (“same, like, similar”).
Conjunction from Middle English like, lyke, lik, lyk, from the adverb Middle English like.
Preposition from Middle English like, lyke, liche, lyche, lijc, liih (“similar to, like, equal to, comparable with”), from Middle English like (adjective) and like (adverb).
Senses: examples: text: My partner and I have like minds.
text: The two cats were as like as though they had come from the same litter.
text: It will seem strange that in all this time the Presbytery was idle, and no effort was made to rid the place of so fell an influence. But there was a reason, and the reason, as in most like cases, was a lassie.
ref: 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:
text: […]and this is not a sky, it is a Soul and living Face! Nothing liker the Temple of the Highest, bright with some real effulgence of the Highest, is seen in this world.
ref: 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 3, Landlord Edmund”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):
text: I opened the man's linen robe, and there over his heart was a dagger-wound, and beneath the woman's fair breast was a like cruel stab, through which her life had ebbed away.
ref: 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
glosses: Similar.
examples: text: But it is like the jolly world about us will scoff at the paradox of these practices.
ref: 1668, Robert South, The Messiah's Sufferings for the Sins of the People (sermon, March 20, 1668)
text: Many were […] not easy to be govern'd, nor like to conform themselves to such strict rules.
ref: (Can we date this quote?), Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641, Oxford: The Theater:
text: Finding it was like to overblow, we took in our Sprit-ſail, and ſtood by to hand the Fore-ſail; but making foul Weather, we look'd the Guns were all faſt, and handed the Miſſen.
ref: 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part II (A Voyage to Brobdingnag), page 151:
text: She had waited overlong, and now it was like that Ailie would escape her toils.
ref: 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:
glosses: Likely; probable.
examples: text: He seems like to run from any semblance of hard work.
ref: 1920 [1843], Charles Dickens, “Stave three: The second of the three spirits”, in A Christmas Carol, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, page 96:
qualifier: otherwise archaic
glosses: inclined (to), prone (to).
raw_tags: with to
Derived terms: alike
as like as not
done like a dinner
it was like this
liddat
likam
-like
like a headless chook
like breaking sticks
like-cultured
like-gendered
like-minded
like-mindedness
likeness
like-positioned
like real
likewise
like you can talk
likish
suchlike
walk it like one talks it