Come talk about fun and quirky words in the English Language. Posting is open to all members.
O.K.
You almost definitely know the meaning of this word. OK is possibly the most universally recognized word in the world. It has been used as a loanword in a lot of languages
OK denotes approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgement. (Too bad I wasn't thinking about this word for alliteration day.)
What you may not know is the history of this word. And to be fair, the history of the word is somewhat disputed. The etymology that has received the most attention is the Boston Abbreviation Fad. In the 19th century, culture thought it was hilarious to comically mispel words. Thus they intentionally spelled "all correct" as "Oll Korrect". And this got abbreviated to OK.
In particular the word gained prominence during the presidential election of 1840. Martin Van Buren was running for president and was a native of Kinderhook, New York. His campaign slogan was "Vote for OK", in this case meaning Old Kinderhook but also obviously trying to cash in on the popularity of the new Oll Korrect acronym.
This is the most popular etymology of OK but is not the only one. And is not even the only etymology seriously considered by linguists.





All correct > Oll Korrect > OK > ok > k > silence
Linguistic history is awesome.
I wonder where all the different spellings originated. It looks like OK, O.K. and Okay all have some level of acceptance.
I couldn't really find anything about the origin stories of the spellings. But I did find this. It looks like OK is the original, and O.K. and okay originated about 100 years later.
With the postulated etymology, it makes sense that it's OK instead of okay.
Is there really any evidence for the "Oll Korrect" story? It sounds like something people just say but isn't actually true.
Yeah a linguist named Allen Walker Read published 6 scholarly articles trying to track it down. And this is his best conclusion. You do a lot of linguistics with incomplete data, ie not every conversation ever is recorded. So it's pretty much impossible to know for sure what the real origin is. This is the best guess currently and new information may change the conclusion.
"OK is possibly the most universally recognized word in the world."
This is a good fact to know!
The rumor is "I remember reading once that the words OK and Coca Cola are the two most recognized terms in the world, regardless of languages. "
Looks like it is not really scientifically substantiated. It makes sense though.
I am both amused and appalled. (But I will never go thirsty.)
I was told this in German as a kid and it makes sense in German, pronunciation-wise. Like if I tried to write down "all correct" in German that's what I'd do. So when I grew up and figured out that English has different pronunciation, I thought it couldn't be true. Now I'm just confused.
When I was in Germany I did hear OK a lot, but I also got a lot of alles klar. Which do you use more?
I probably use "okay" most (spelled like that, usually). "Alles klar" (~=I understood that) is common, too, or "in Ordnung" (~=alright).
This is a bit weird, because the anecdote I know of is that in World War 1, soldiers used to report back from battles and say zero killed, which was seen as good news (obviously!), and then it got shortened to "oh" "kay" as in 0 K, and then it started getting spelt phonatically as okay and took on the meanign of everything's fine....