Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
-like
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Remove ads
English
Etymology
From Middle English -like, -lik, from Middle English like, lik (“same, similar, alike”), from Old English ġelīc and Old Norse líkr (“same, similar, alike”). Reinforced by like (preposition). Doublet of -ly. Compare also Dutch -lijk (“-ly, -like”).
Suffix
-like
- Resembling, having some of the characteristics of (used to form adjectives from nouns).
- Even at 13 years old, she still had a childlike voice.
- I saw the snake-like coils of the garden hose peeking out from under the deck.
- 1996, Kevin Siembieda, Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game page 128 under "Dark"
- Damage: Those with normal, human-like vision are blind
- 2012 May 20, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 16 August 2012:
- What other television show would feature a gorgeously designed sequence where a horrifically mutated Pierre and Marie Curie, their bodies swollen to Godzilla-like proportions from prolonged exposure to the radiation that would eventually kill them, destroy an Asian city with their bare hands like vengeance-crazed monster-Gods? […] Because the audience couldn’t possibly be expected to know who the Curies were, let alone that they were married and died of radiation poisoning, and devoting precious time to a scene of the scientists as Mothra-like destroyers does nothing but waste time and alienate an audience that just wants to hear characters spout their catchphrases.
- (dialectal) Used to form adverbs from adjectives or nouns; alternative of -ly.
- 2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube, level/area: Boggly Woods:
- Hah! Big, bad Punio. Listen to yourself! Trying to sound all important-like!
Usage notes
- Words formed with like are often spelled with a hyphen. This is particularly the case with British spelling more so than American spelling, where it is somewhat more common to form the word without a hyphen.
.svg){kind=small}
Synonyms
Note: the suffixes below cannot necessarily replace "-like", but are also used to form words having the same sense as words formed using "-like".
Derived terms
Translations
having some of the characteristics of (used to form adjectives from nouns)
|
Further reading
- “-like”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- “-like”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “-like” (US) / “-like” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
- “-like”, in Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
- -like in Britannica Dictionary
Anagrams
Remove ads
Middle English
Etymology 1
Suffix
-like
- alternative form of -ly (“adjectival suffix”)
Etymology 2
Suffix
-like
- alternative form of -ly (“adverbial suffix”)
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads