The English language is full of abbreviations. Although the words behind several of these shortened forms tend to feel fairly obvious (like FT. For the feet and VP for the vice -president), there are many less known examples – even among the common scholars that we use in daily discourse and writing.
Indeed, not everyone will have the answer if you ask what “AM” and “PM” represent, or why we use “LB” “to shorten a book. And I recently realized that, despite saying and sending it several times a day, I had no idea what OK represents.
We usually use OK or OK to express assent, agreement or acceptance. It can also be an adjective or an adverb to suggest that something is satisfactory. Over time, it has even become a verb and a name to indicate approval or authorization. OK now appears in countless languages around the world and was even one of the first sounds pronounced on the moon.
Despite the omnipresence of “OK”, my informal survey of friends and colleagues found that none alone knew the words behind these two letters.
It is not terribly surprising. Even etymologists were not sure of the meaning and origin of OK for many years. Some have suggested that he derives from Choctaw’s “Okeh”, which means “it is”, while others have shown West African origins through Mande and Wolof languages. Additional theories involved Orrin Kendall, a manufacturer of a People’s Army cookie who supported many Union soldiers during the civil war, or the Haitian cayes port, which was famous for its rum exports.
Although certain debates persist, the most widely accepted explanation among linguistic experts comes from the etymologist and lexicographers, Allen Walker. A professor at Columbia University, Read examined the story of “OK” in a series of articles published in American Speech in 1963 and 1964, and concluded that he comes from “OLL KORRECT”, an intentional error of “all correct”.
“He noted that Charles Gordon Green of the Boston Morning Post proposed him as a spelling joke shared by the newspapers, as an internet of a period earlier,” said etymologist Barry Popik. “” OK “means” all correct “. It should be “AC”, but it’s a joke. »»
Indeed, the first known published appearance of OK with this meaning comes from an article of March 23, 1839, the number of Boston Morning Post, which describes the activities of a satirical organization called The Anti-Bell Ringing Society.
The above is Providence Journalwhose publisher is a little too fast on the trigger, on this occasion. We did not say a word on our deputation passing “through the city” of Providence. – We said that our brothers went to New York in the Richmond, and they went, according to Thursday’s position. The “Chairman of the Charitable Conference Committee” is one of the deputations, and perhaps if he had to return to Boston, via Providence, him of the newspaper and his form-Band, would have its “contribution box”, and this All right – everything is correct – and steal the traffic jams, like sparksupwards.
Subsequent mentions of “OK – All Correct” appeared in the Boston Morning Post in the following days and weeks, and the term quickly reached other papers such as the Baltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Gazette.
This type of intentional spelling recalls more recent linguistic modes, such as the use of “Kewl” or “Kool” instead of “cool” and common abbreviations like Lol and NSFW.
“We consider intentional spelling mistakes as a modern phenomenon, but I like this period of American history – the 1830s and the 1940s – because it has the impression that it was a time when Americans really started to have fun with their language and do things like offering creative innovations,” said Ben Zimmer creative innovations. “OK was born from a kind of abbreviation game which was popular in the United States and in the United Kingdom at the time, long before the text of text. It is funny because it combined two playful trends-comic mistreats and this mode to make abbreviations for sentences, like NG for not good. ””
The other abbreviations of words badly spelled at that time included Ky for “Know Yuse”, to signify “no use” and KG for “Know Go”, as in “No-Go”.
“Before OK was OW, which came from a badly spelled version of” All Right “-” Oll Wright “,” added Zimmer. “It first appears in the Boston Morning Post, then OK appears. The editor was having a lot of fun with that.”
However, we may have politics to thank for having propelled OK to new heights.
“People at some point assumed that it came from the nickname Martin Van Buren” Old Kinderhook “in the 1840 presidential election,” said Zimmer. “There were pimples that said” OK “, so people supposed that the Van Buren campaign proposed it, but they only pushed this thing that came from Boston.”
Supporters of the outgoing Democrat have even formed “OK clubs”, some of which had the slogan “Ok is ok!” But Van Buren’s WHIG party opponents used OK in a very different way – to denigrate its predecessor and mentor Andrew Jackson.
A March 1840 issue of the New York Herald promulgated or created the rumor that Jackson was illiterate and thought that “all correct” was spelled “Ole Kurrek”, so he wrote OK on official documents to indicate approval. Thus, the myth has spread, catapulting OK in the national conversation. And, as they say, the rest is history.
The fact that Whit managed to maintain such a grip in our daily language in the United States and far beyond the English-speaking world is impressive to say the least. The late linguist Allan Metcalf even wrote a book entitled “OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word” and proposed a party entitled “Ok Day” on March 23 to celebrate its first known quote on March 23, 1839.
“I agree with the point of Allan Metcalf in his book that it is an incredibly improbable story – that this abbreviation of two words from a small funny fashion in the 1830s could conquer the world,” said Zimmer. “It just shows that the language develops unexpectedly. Things that people find interesting or fun and want to use can come from all kinds of different sources. ”
Zimmer thinks that looking at examples of the past, like OK, can help us understand how people are innovating with language today through memes and online slang, which always include funny abbreviations. And although we consider the language of the past as formal because we are used to meeting it through texts of literature and non-fiction, we can find a more relaxed and fun writing in places such as old comics and humorous newspapers.
“You can see that there is this impulse which predates modern communication and technology,” said Zimmer. “You can just use newspapers during the day to broadcast these creative things. It’s fascinating for me. I love the way we can see the game of language in a way through an example like OK. People have the constituent elements of the language at their disposal and can always find something new. ”
