"...You say that something is 'just like the plain folks that all of us are'.... Did you learn how to use 'like' that way at Groton or Harvard or where?" — Janet R. Aiken, quoted in The Columbia Daily Spectator, 24 Nov. 1937
About the Word:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was taken to task for his use of slang and informal language on more than one occasion. The quote above was from an open letter written to him by a professor at Columbia University, who found fault with his use of the word like as a conjunction (this used to be a thing that people complained about, before they decided to complain about other ways that people use like).
Another word use of FDR that raised eyebrows came about in 1933, when he used the word chiselers to refer to people who shirked their part in the government's recovery efforts during the Depression. Although chiseler had previously been thought of as underworld jargon, there were some who defended the President's use of the word, most notably lexicographer Frank Vizetelly, editor of the Funk & Wagnalls dictionary: "President Roosevelt's use of the word automatically elevated it from the status of slang to colloquialism.... When a man of such station as the president of the United States employs a slang phrase he clothes it with dignity."
Definition:
: having the characteristics of : similar to
Photo credit: Wikimedia
