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like¹

(līk)

v. liked, lik·ing, likes

v.tr.

1. To find pleasant or attractive; enjoy: Do you like ice cream? I like your style.

a. To want to have: I would like some coffee.

b. To prefer: How would you like your coffee—with sugar or without?

3. To feel about; regard: How do you like these new theater seats?

4. To believe or predict that (a certain competitor) will win a contest: Which team do you like in tonight's game?

5. To perform well under (a given condition) or using (a given feature): This car does not like cold weather. The engine does not like enriched fuel.

6. Archaic To be pleasing to.

v.intr.

1. To have an inclination or a preference: If you like, we can meet you there.

2. Scots To be pleased.

Something that is liked; a preference: made a list of his likes and dislikes.

Idiom:

like it or not

No matter how one might feel: Like it or not, we have to get up early tomorrow.

[Middle English liken, from Old English līcian, to please; see līk- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

like³

(līk) also liked (līkt)

aux.v.
Chiefly Southern US

Used with a past infinitive or with to and a simple past form to indicate being just on the point of or coming near to having done something in the past: "I like to a split a gut laughin'." "It seemed as how nobody had thought about measurin' the width of the bridge's openin', and we like to didn't make it through" (Dictionary of American Regional English).

[Middle English liken, to compare, from like, similar; see LIKE².]

Our Living Language In certain Southern varieties of American English there are two grammatically distinct usages of the word like to mean "was on the verge of." In both, either like or liked is possible. In the first, the word is followed by a past infinitive: We like (or liked) to have drowned. The ancestor of this construction was probably the adjective like in the sense "likely, on the verge of," as in She's like to get married again. The adjective was reinterpreted by some speakers as a verb, and since like to and liked to are indistinguishable in normal speech, the past tense came to be marked on the following infinitive for clarity. From this developed a second way of expressing the same concept: the use of like to with a following finite past tense verb form, as in I like to died when I saw that. This construction appears odd at first because it ostensibly contains an ungrammatical infinitive, to died, but that is not the case at all. What has happened is that like to here has been reinterpreted as an adverb meaning almost. In fact, it is quite common to see the phrase spelled as a single word, in the pronunciation spelling liketa.

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

Indo-European Roots

Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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