They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. The article is wrong about one thing. "Like" didn't start with the Valley Girls

The use of "like" as a filler is at least 50 years old.

I first heard it from the character of Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, played by Bob Denver, who later played Gilligan on Gilligan's Island. Maynard was supposed to be a beatnik (the counterculture of the late 1950s--they drank espresso, smoked marijuana, listened to progressive jazz, wrote weird poetry, and dabbled in Zen), and he used "like" in that way all the time.

The writers of this article, like, need to, like, learn about, ya know, things that happened, like, before they were, like, born.