I came across the other day a hilarious New Yorker poem by Fred R. Miller. It was published in the Aug. 26, 1961, issue. As its title, “A Madrigal, As It Were, of Modifiers,’’ suggests, it is packed with modifiers, a term used by Miller specifically to denote, not an adjective or noun used attributively (“a happy vacation trip’’), but a clause that purports to add information to a sentence when, in fact, it is utterly useless.

Indeed, Miller’s poem ridicules this particular type of strategy, displayed often by pretentious English-language speakers, which allows them to show off a certain self-fashioned panache by accumulating needless recursions within a phrase. These kinds of utterances have been rather normal — maybe even innocuous — in Britain (people no longer say “Great’’ before the country’s name) because the Queen’s English tends toward formality. In the United States, they sound pretentious.

These are the first of three stanzas in Miller’s madrigal:

Although, unhappily, it would appear,

That, like it or not, the trend,

Which, taking one fact with another, the sheer

Weight of the evidence, whatever the mere

Look of the thing, contravening, as here

The improbable, so to speak, end,

Must tend,

By force of its logic, to wend—

“Like it or not,’’ “true enough,’’ “in effect,’’ “taking one fact after another,’’ “so to speak,’’ “we must concede’’. . . The list of modifiers in the poem is delicious and is also deliberately arduous. In fact, it could be said that the entire piece is nothing but appended clauses. This abundance, needless to say (here I go, inserting one such modifier!), is something the old New Yorker was known for, which obviously makes Miller’s an exercise in self-mockery.

I confess: As I am a non-native English speaker (from Mexico, to boot), these unpleasant expressions drive me nuts. They feel like fluff. Although it’s impossible to avoid them, I prefer succinctness, simplicity, and directness.

One modifier to which I react with more discomfort is “as it were.’’ After more than three decades in the United States, I’m still unsure exactly of its usage. Maybe this is as it should be, in order to make those of us coming to English from its periphery feel marginal, unsynchronized with its rhythm.

“As it were’’ is an idiom used after a figurative, when the speaker is not meaning what she appears to mean. Take the sentence “If María is ready, she could pay for the present, as it were.’’ The speaker is unsure of María’s action, thus the modifier. “As it were’’ could be replaced by similar modifiers, such as “by and large,’’ “so to say,’’ “in a manner of speaking,’’ “in a way,’’ “to some extent,’’ etc.

Merriam-Webster offers this definition: “— used to say that a statement is true or accurate in a certain way even if it is not literally or completely true.’’ Notice that the dictionary doesn’t attach the terms “modifier’’ or “idiom.’’ It simply puts a —, leaving it to the reader to guess. The dictionary follows its statement with what appears to me a joyful example: “His retirement was, as it were, the beginning of his real career.’’ (The true personality of a lexicon comes across not only in its definitions but in its examples. Proof is Doctor Johnson’s marvelous “A Dictionary of the English’’ language from 1755.)

Of course, “as it were’’ is entirely useless because the conjugation used in the sentence is conditional, meaning that “could’’ denotes possibility. That implies that María has several options, one of them being to pay for the present, and that her action is open to chance, and, thus, meaning isn’t set.

To insert “as it were’’ in the sentence is therefore to subscribe two options. The first is to enlarge the role of chance. (María might not be unready to pay for the present, but she is possibly hesitating about that option.) The second option is mere fat. The sentence is perfectly clear when annunciated this way: “If María is ready, she could pay for the present.’’ Nothing else is needed. In other words, the expression “as it were’’ neither adds nor takes an iota. Yet by inserting it, the speaker is boasting linguistic sapience; that is, adding a needless layer of butter to the toast.

The whole thing reminds me of the paralyzing virus of “likes’’ that upper-middle class Americans youths, especially girls, already suffering from it for a couple of decades, seem incapable of getting themselves cured from. “Like’’ might be used as a preposition (“there were other Mexicans like me’’), a conjunction (“I felt like an alien’’), an adjective (“I reacted in like manner’’), an adverb (“The singer sang bird-like’’), and a noun (“like’’ is the equivalent of “just as’’). However, the virus I’m referring to employs “like’’ as a tag word, as in, “And I wanted, like, to scream!’’

The use of “like’’ in this circumstance isn’t a modifier per se. It needlessly prolongs the enunciated idea, interrupting it with an obnoxious pause. Imagine it now with “as it were’’ instead of “like’’: “And I wanted, as it were, to scream.’’ Or else, with “so to speak,’’ “true enough,’’ and “in a way.’’ The essence is the same but not the tone, much less the attitude.

In the case of American girls, the profusion of “likes’’ is much worse than this example implies. Habitually in the same sentence there might be four, six, maybe even more intrusions. “Like, my girlfriend was shopping for like an hour and I was like, what’s going on, and she said, like, I told you I would needed stuff, like, didn’t we agreed to go to the mall, like, for the afternoon?’’ In contrast, “as it were’’ is deliberately featured more sparingly, given that cautionary, well-orchestrated grammar is a sign of erudition.

The last four lines of Fred R. Miller’s madrigal — which, by the way, is a short lyrical song in several voices, emulating a Renaissance tradition, thriving in the enjoyment of counterpoint — are suitable to conclude my brief meditation on verbal bluff:

…once the pattern, unsought,

Is envisaged, or, rather, since what has been wrought

With such, by and large, opaque art,

Is smart,

Leaves us just where we were at the start.

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His latest books are “Quixote’’ and “Oy, Caramba!’’