like (a number or amount)

"Like" sometimes means "about". Use it this way before a time or a number:

He went on for like twenty minutes about how his neighbor is putting in a swimming pool.

There were like well over 500 people there.

Some older people don't like it when people use "like" in this way, but it's a pretty well-established part of spoken language for a lot of English speakers now. It's not used in formal writing or speeches.

This phrase appears in these lessons: