| 词组 | like to, liked to |
| 释义 | like to, liked to The like and liked in these expressions has been variously identified as adjective, verb, and auxiliary verb (the last is our present dictionary rubric). If the grammar is a bit perplexing, the meaning is not: "came near (to), almost." As idioms go, it is modestly old, dating back to the 15th century. Around 1600 Shakespeare used both forms: • We had lik'd to have had our two noses snapp'd off —Much Ado About Nothing, 1599 • ... I have had four quarrels, and like to have fought one —As You Like It, 1600 The idiom—if we call both variants one idiom—was quite common in literary sources during the 17th and 18th centuries: • Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down • Into doubt's boundless sea, where, like to drown Books bear him up awhile....—John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Satire Against Mankind, 1675 • ... I had like to have lost my Comparison for want of Breath —William Congreve, The Way of the World, 1700 • Mr Prior was like to be insulted in the street for being supposed the author of it —Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 9 Feb. 1711 • While he uttered this eloquent harangue, I had like to have laughed in his face —Tobias Smollett, translation of Gil Bias, 1749 • And such bellows too! Lord Mansfield with his cheeks like to burst —James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791 The evidence in the OED and OED Supplement shows that at least in the form like to the idiom continued in English literary use through the 19th century. But its translation to American English seems not to have been so literary. Consequently, Americans are likely to equate the terms with countrified or uneducated or old-fashioned speech. With the idiom's dropping out of literary use generally in the 20th century, most of our city-bred commentators think it uncouth. We will all know more about its distribution when the appropriate volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English appears, but our present information suggests that it is too widespread to be considered regional. It is a speech form that you will not need in discursive prose. • ... Grover went to chewing on it and it liked to burn him up —Henry P. Scalf, quoted in Our Appalachia, ed. Laurel Shackelford & Bill Weinberg, 1977 • ... and he like to have never got away —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 11 Jan. 1958 |
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