A brief statement on four-letter words...

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary provides 8 entries for the word like. The definition at the very bottom of the list (following the more common entries) is the following:

Function: verbal auxiliary
chiefly dialect : came near : was near


Over the past hour-and-a-half I have borne witness to such an over-abundance of the term that I could, like, gag. Yes, you guessed it, I was sitting adjacent two Cornell Co-Eds, each garbed in Gucci and cashmere, and each sporting keyrings bearing BMW logos. Over one 5-minute period, I determined their mean rate of usage to be nearly 20 likes/minute. That is like, a lot.

A partial transcript of their conversation:

Bimbo 1: Did you, like, SEE Sonja today? I was, like,
"Omigosh, you can't be serious!" She was, like, parading around in her, like, sweatpants and high school band shirt.

Bimbo 2: Ewww! No Way! I, like, don't believe it. She wore that in the house? [I assume she meant Sorority House]

B1: Yeah! And like, Paige, Crissy, Tiffany and I were down there waiting for Rod to pick us up for class, because it was, like, snowing. He came in and he, like, had to have seen her. We were, like, "Whatever" and like, got out of there in a rush.

B2: How embarrassing. Like, no wonder she doesn't have a boyfriend.

B1: I know. I think we should have, like, a dress code or something for the downstairs. I mean, she was wearing that in the, like, afternoon!

B2: I, like, hate her.

It is funny, until you realize that these two darlings are attending an expensive and (apparently) selective Ivy League University (methinks they are not enrolled in any of the statutory [Land Grant] colleges of Cornell).