@Buzzbuzz10 - well that second part rules me well out, by a few decades even. Perhaps I should also confess that I never use FB and don't currently live in the UK, so I'm not the best person to ask about current UK youth slang - I only know what I hear on Radio 4 extra and read about in the papers.

@providencejim - apparently even earlier; this is from the Online Etymology Dictionary - 'as a presumed emphatic ("going, like, really fast") from 1950, originally in counterculture slang and bop talk.' - counterculture to me is from the hippy times, so I would put both our examples from before that - so bop culture, beat generation and beatniks sound right to me (that was when I was at school).

I remember deliberately learning to use it in my hippy days, and then later trying to "unlearn" it, not totally successfully.

What surprises me is how many people of that generation, or probably younger, criticise kids today for using it, seeming to think that the use of "like" in this way is something relatively new.

I still use it quite frequently, and I don't think it's a problem until it's overdone.

On the other hand it does also have the newer (80s?) meaning of "said" as well - 'And he was like - what's your name, and I was like - Shelley'. When the two are combined it can get a bit much. : I was listening to an Australian comedian the other day, and she used it so frequently it became a bit annoying, even for (relatively tolerant) me.

As a filler at the end of an expression, it's been used for a couple of hundred years - "The word has been used as a postponed filler ("going really fast, like") from 1778". I don't know if you have this use in the States, but it's common in Northern English and some Scottish dialects - 'What are you doing later, like?'.

@jayles - OTT is pretty old hat now, I think, although I hadn't realised it had originally been stronger in the States. About the same vintage as "moreish" (BrE), I would imagine.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=OTT%3Aeng_gb_2012%2COTT%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cmoreish%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cmoreish%3Aeng_us_2012&year_start=1960&year_end=2008&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2COTT%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2COTT%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmoreish%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmoreish%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0

@Buzzbuzz10 - I'm not really aware of these new meanings of sick. This could be geographical (I'm British), but probably more likely to do with age.

Every generation of young people invent their own language. Some expressions stick, others fall by the wayside. From around my generation, words which have stayed include "cool" and "hype". But who now says things like "far out", "groovy", "fab", "a bummer", "hey, that's heavy man"? (Some of which I confess to using a long, long time ago.

And in case anyone thinks "like" as a filler is relatively new, I recently heard it on a radio comedy programme from 1961 - one sketch included "You mean like what's my name" as wellas the expressions "hepcat" and "way out, man". That makes it probably from the beat generation, from before the hippy generation (mine).

And hipster (as in someone who is hip) goes back to 1941 when it had a similar meaning to hepcat, which meant they were probably into jazz and swing.

@Tanvir - I'm not with you, could you give us an example?

@jayles - I do agree with you about keeping terminology to a minimum in lessons, and I grant you that students are much likely to know what adjectives are than determiners. And to use your analogy, we also often use nouns as adjectives.

In fact, I think I just refer to "my"etc as possessives if the need arises, which isn't that often (they don't seem to cause many problems for Polish learners, at least). But course books occasionally refer to determiners, so I have to be able to explain them.

The point I was making to Syed Usman was that it's dangerous to talk in absolutes in language. Just because his language community and mine refer to "my" etc as determiners and "mine" etc as "possessive pronouns" it doesn't mean that someone else referring to "my" etc as possessive pronouns is necessarily wrong. That's no doubt how many linguists refer to them, for example.

I learnt this the hard way. I had just written a post for my blog on determiners and pronouns, when I saw a rather (unfairly in my view) poor review of an EFL grammar book on a blog with a distinctly linguistics slant. One of the reviewer's complaints was that the book referred to "my" etc as determiners, when they were in fact (in his opinion) pronouns. When I dared to comment that this was absolutely standard in EFL, he quoted Huddleston and Pullum at me, and I was given a lecture about "determinatives" (which I had never heard of - neither I think, have many people).

As I was rather worried I'd got it all wrong in my blog post, I did some investigating into the whole determiner / determinative thing (it's a bit of a mess), hence my mention of those two reference books. But I have one strong principle on my blog, which is that I use the mainstream terminology of EFL, so I'm sticking with the standard EFL and dictionary definition of determiner I'd already used, and leaving the weird and wonderful stuff to the linguists..

Hi HS, I presume you are simply expressing a dislike of the use of the word "choices" to mean "options" or "alternatives". But this surely quite standard, as in the expression "multiple-choice question", for example.

And this is nothing new:

"You appear to have two choices — matrimony, or a fight." William Hamilton Maxwell 1835

And here's an example (with three choices) from the University of Michigan, from 1927:

"At the end of this year the freshman would have three choices: he could enter a fraternity, apply for entrance to an upperclass college, or decide to live for the rest of his non-professional career in a private residence."

Admittedly few British dictionaries seem to include this definition, but Macmillan Dictionary does - "one of the things you can choose from" - with this example sentence:

"There are three choices of dessert on the menu"

And Merriam-Webster give these two examples:

"There is a wide range of choices."
"Other choices on the menu looked equally tempting."

It would seem that "choices" is used like this slightly more in American English:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=have+two+choices%3Aeng_us_2012%2Chave+two+options%3Aeng_us_2012%2Chave+two+choices%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Chave+two+options%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Chave+two+alternatives%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chave%20two%20choices%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chave%20two%20options%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chave%20two%20choices%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chave%20two%20options%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chave%20two%20alternatives%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

But it's found in quite respectable places in BrE too:

"A drop in mining tax revenue as a result of lower commodity prices will offer two choices: ditch the surplus, or save it by cutting spending ..." The Economist

"Two choices presented: a £22 taxi fare to the next meeting – thank you, Ken Livingstone – or a quick mercy dash to Zara"- The Times

"Up to now, the traditional funeral business has really only offered two choices - cremation or burial" - The Independent

"The rat-catcher confirmed my diagnosis and told me that I had two choices: I could lift up the floorboards and remove the rat, or I could wait six weeks, after which the smell would go." - The Spectator

"It is as if there were only two choices – being critical, or being a dupe." - The New Statesman

I don't know about pre-book, although It seems to simply mean book in advance (i.e. before you usually would or is necessary). Pre-order is easy enough - it means to order something before it becomes available and have it reserved for you. This is from Wikipedia:

"A pre-order is an order placed for an item which has not yet been released. The idea for pre-orders came when people found it hard to get popular items in stores due to their popularity. Companies were then given the idea to allow people to reserve their own personal copy, before the release, which has been a huge success. Pre-orders allow consumers to guarantee immediate shipment on release, manufacturers can gauge how much demand there will be and hence how large initial production runs should be, and sellers can be assured of minimum sales. Additionally, high pre-order rates can be used to further increase sales."

This was published a few days after the release of the PS4 - "day one PS4 pre-orders sold out months ago"

If you simply said order, you'd need to add something like pre-release or pre-publication or advance, so I don't really see a problem with pre-order. No doubt it's being seen more because the Internet makes it easier to do.

But it does look as though some companies use it simply instead of 'order'.

@jayles - I agree with you about terminology when teaching foreign learners, but this is a language forum, where we should be able to discuss these things. And then you yourself use a piece of terminology - adjective (both adjectives and determiners are word classes in EFL and much of ESL) - one which is almost never used to categorise "my" in EFL.

To me an adjective tells us something about the inherent quality of something, which "my" does not. If you and I both have fast red Italian sports cars, fast, red and Italian tell us something about the nature of the cars - "my" and "your" tell us nothing about the nature of the cars, simply whose or which they are. So it seems logical to me to class them with other determiners such as articles, demonstratives and interrogatives.

The second problem about calling them adjectives is that if students look them up in a dictionary or modern grammar book (apart from those monster reference books I mentioned, they will be referred to as determiners. I quite agree about K.I.S.S. so I use the same term students will find elsewhere.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/my

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/determiners-and-quantifiers (EFL)

http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/grammar-lesson-determiners.php#.UqdpkScudm0 (ESL/EFL)

Here's one site that does treat them as adjectives, though:
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/sample/beginner/gs/gs_40.htm (adjectives)

Good discussion about the change from adjective to determiner at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determiner

@Syed Usman - " 'My' is not a possessive pronoun, 'My' is a determiner and 'Mine' is a possessive pronoun." Were it only so easy!

In EFL, we certainly refer to "my" etc as determiners and "mine" as possessive pronouns in the way you do, as do most British dictionaries, especially learner's dictionaries and grammar books aimed at foreign learners. And for me this is certainly the system that makes most sense - a pronoun standing in for a noun and a determiner referencing a noun..

In nineteenth century grammar, and earlier, however, "my" etc were indeed categorised as (dependent) possessive pronouns, while "mine" etc were classed as independent possessive pronouns.

Then some grammarians started classing "my" etc as possessive adjectives, an idea that prevailed until the idea of determiners was born, fairly recently. And you will still see "my" etc referred to as possessive adjectives on many grammar websites.

But then to complicate things, a newer generation of theoretical reference grammars have gone back to classing them as possessive pronouns. The highly influential Comprehensive Grammar of the English Grammar, by Quirk, Greenbaum et al (1985) has a word class (part of speech) - determiners (articles, "this" etc) - which have a "determinative" function. But for them, "my" etc are not determiners, but are listed as possessive pronouns with a determinative function, while "mine" etc are listed as personal pronouns with an independent function.

To further complicate matters, the latest reference grammar, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey Pullum et al (2002), reverses the role of the words determiner and determinative, so that "determinative" is now the word class and "determiner" the function. But they also exclude "my" etc from this word class, and list them as possessive pronouns having a determiner function.

To summarise, you and I, the EFL world and the main British dictionaries refer to "my" etc as determiners. Many ESL websites refer to "my" etc as possessive adjectives, while both the earliest prescriptivist grammars and the latest descriptivist reference grammars refer to "my" etc as possessive pronouns, having a determinative or determiner function, depending on whether you favour Quirk and Greenbaum or Huddleston and Pullum.

So it looks as though everybody's right.

Having said all that, I agree with your basic analysis.

@jayles - by colonial, I assume you mean American. Its current use may have started in America, but it's certainly not an American word, at least not on its original meaning of inspiring awe (1590s).

As we both use this forum, we both obviously use the Internet, where you may have noticed the 'colonials' tend to be in the majority. It's virtually impossible to read any American tech review or watch a tech presentation, or read any comments section without coming across it in its new guise meaning, apparently, anything from quite good to great. It is, in fact, pretty well ubiquitous. My Firefox browser even has an 'awesome bar'. You'd really have to live in a cocoon not to see it pretty constantly.

As far as the UK is concerned, I've noticed that some of the younger generation of British stand-ups are beginning to use it as well, so it's only a matter of time.

I'm being a grumpy old man here, of course, and I have no logical reason to criticise this (relatively) new meaning; I'm quite happy, after all, with the newer uses of decimate and beg the question. It just shows, I think, that we tend to be happy with changes from our generation (for me, all those expressions that came in with the beat and hippy generations - hassle, rip-off etc), but not so much with the ones that come later. In other words pet peeves are purely subjective, and are simply that - peeves - and we shouldn't try to rationalise them by saying that people who use language in a way we personally don't like are somehow 'wrong'.