what are you like
1
9.1
- idiom
:
¿cómo eres?
- Is that what you're like with your kids?
- What are you like at home
Examples
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What were you like when you were younger?
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What were you like in high school?
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Do you remember what you were like when we first started?
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You knew what I was like before we got married.
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I knew what you were like, but I expected it to be different.
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- What are you like when you really get mad?
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What were you like when you were little?
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What are you like under that big baggy coat?
Fiction book (2002) -
"What are you like when you're not enchanted?"
Fiction book (1991) -
Can you tell me what you are like when you're at work?
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning — asking about someone's characteristics or what sort of person they are — is directly derivable from the parts: 'what' (asks about kind), the copula 'are', 'you', and 'like' in the sense ‘similar to / what sort of’. This is a straightforward, compositional pattern (cross-linguistically common) so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
What are you like comes from the simple image of asking which 'type' a person is — as if you were choosing a box or label for them. So today it is used to ask about someone's 'personality' or how they act.