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KF5JRV > TODAY 23.03.26 09:04l 32 Lines 2158 Bytes #60 (0) @ WW
BID : 9335_KD5TCY
Subj: Today in History - Mar 23
Path: ED1ZAC<ED1ZAC<LU4ECL<K1AJD<VE3CGR<KD5TCY
Sent: 260323/0656Z 9335@KD5TCY.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.24
On March 23, 1839, the initials "O.K." are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as
an abbreviation for "oll korrect," a popular slang misspelling of "all correct" at the time, OK
steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.
During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell
words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another.
Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such
as "kewl" for "cool" or "DZ" for "these," the "in crowd" of the 1830s had a whole host of slang
terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included "KY" for "No use" ("know yuse"), "KG"
for "No go" ("Know go"), and "OW" for all right ("oll wright").
Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was
printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked
up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for
reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group
was formally called the "O.K. Club," which referred both to Van Buren’s nickname "Old Kinderhook"
(based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the
papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of "OK" to denigrate Van Buren’s
political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation "OK"
to cover up his own misspelling of "all correct."
The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind “OKö was an American linguist named Allen
Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous
theories on the origins of "OK," ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to
the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named
Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, "OK" has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world,
and certainly one of America’s greatest lingual exports.
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