What’s not to like?

"What’s not to like?"  Everyone is using this these days! I bet it confuses foreign, i.e. non-native, speakers of English – after all it's a really positive comment, yet it contains a negative, so it seems to go against all the norms of utterance.  Tricky!

This phrase has become very widespread in the UK in only a few years. Everyone seems to use it, young and old alike.

So what did we use to say instead? It’s hard to say.

"That’s perfect, nobody could object to that!" or "That’s great!" or "I love it!" are, perhaps, some possibilities.

But this phrase "What’s not to like?" does seem to do a good job in summarising these comments, these sentiments. It's very handy in fact: one phrase fits all!

But, despite all that, I don’t really like it, or at least not yet. 

So what is NOT to like about this rhetorical question? Perhaps nothing in particular except for it’s being ‘new’, not part of my own chosen idiolect*. I think I feel that it’s been foisted on me by the media: for instance the BBC seems to have quickly taken it up, both in documentaries / news, and in dramas such as The Archers set in contemporary Britain: the character Eddie Grundy collects unwanted wind-fallen apples, makes cider, makes money— This is great, or as he puts it, “What’s not to like?”

But in spite of my general dislike of the phrase, I have to (grudgingly) admit that I think it may be growing on me — probably because of its economy in summing up some of the above sentiments.

Anyhow, whatever I think, "What’s not to like?" has lodged in our collective colloquial idiolect, for at least the time being... Like it or not! 

* Idiolect = the speech habits peculiar to a particular person [Google, accessed 05.01.2018]