I was thinking, is it grammatically correct to say, "I feel like such a fool"?
In my opinion it can be either "I feel like a fool" or "I feel such a fool".
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asked Jan 5 '18 at 17:32
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You are likely to hear native English speakers using all three - although not at the same time! However, I agree with your preferences. – Ronald Sole Jan 5 '18 at 17:37
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There appears to be a difference in usage between British vs. American English for this sense of feel. British English uses "feel such a" and American English (the dialect I speak) uses "feel like such a". And both dialects use "feel like a".
This is backed up by the data I found using the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA):
BNC:
- "feel like such a": no relevant results
- "feel such a": 8 relevant results
- "feel like a": 224 results, but not all are relevant (and I don't feel like getting an exact number)
COCA:
- "feel like such a": 31 relevant results
- "feel such a": 1 relevant result
- "feel like a": 2791 results, but not all are relevant (and I really don't feel like getting an exact number as this is even larger than the BNC results)
Note: When I say "relevant results", this means I have excluded irrelevant results from the totals, such as "I feel such a connection".
