If you’re a millennial or millennial-adjacent, you probably grew up being chastised for using the word “like” inappropriately. You’re probably familiar with the sins: the first is employing it as a filler word, to give you time to think: “I was, like, trying to speak in a socially acceptable way.” The second is using it to mean “said”, as in: “My English teacher was like, ‘Don’t talk like that.’” And the third is using it to denote approximation: “People who police the word are all, like, a million years old.”
Yet, we all made it to adulthood despite the verbal carnage; many of us even have jobs that require communication. Now that millennials are, like, becoming the establishment, will the stigma against the word disappear?
