Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/17/ok-heres-a-great-explainer.html
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Please tell me this is oll korreckt. I saw this last week and it’s just too beautiful.
Please be true.
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Is this the thread theme? OK Go!
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I always feel weird using it with non-English speakers, but it seems to be in regular usage in multiple languages now.
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For years, I thought misspelling things sounded like the lamest form of comedy. Then we haz cheezburgers.
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Oh, you cheeky Victorian hipsters!
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That’s the explanation that I’ve read multiple places - “OK” being slang abbreviation, which moved into more popular usage because of its use by newspaper editors, for “oll korrect.” Apparently it is the only one of those joke short-hands (also including: k.g. for “know go” - “no go”) to survive because of president Martin van Buren. His nickname was “Old Kinderhook,” so his supporters formed the “O.K. Club,” referencing both his nickname and the abbreviation. His detractors then made sport with their own abbreviations, “out of kash, out of karacter, orful katastrophe, orfully konfused, oll kwarrelling,” which gave it more cultural attention, allowing it to survive but also masking the origin. So within 50 years it was in widespread use, no one remembered where it came from and had all sorts of folk etymologies for it.
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I thought it derived from Lakota, I think “hokahay”.
I know I read something about rhis decades ago. I’m thinking “Crazy Horse” by Mari Sandoz, but it’s been almost forty years.
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So… 2018?
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“Trump is O.K!”
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Very interesting and convincing. It’s worth noting that the kraze for misspelling product names was encouraged by trademark laws. Everyday words in general use could not be trademarked (cream, clear coat) but alternate spellings could (Kreme, Kleer-Kote).
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Fun fact: OK got its name from dropping the C and E from main brand COKE.
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I call bullshit on this and most other acronym-based word explanations – e.g., “posh”= Port Out, Starboard Home; “fuck”= For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge etc etc. Look: language is primarily spoken, not written, and although it may be amusing to observe that “Orl Kerrect” can be pronounced similarly to “all correct”, that doesn’t mean the population at large is going to make that connection and extract an acronymic abbreviation in the course of routine conversation.
On the other hand, in the late 16th C “aye”, derived from “I”, came into regular usage as and indicator of assent, particularly in maritime use. Meanwhile, Scots had been saying “och” for years before, meaning roughly “what?”. So “och, aye” = “what’s that? Got it.” Throw in a vowel shift on the “Aye”, elide the “ch” and the “I”, and in no time at all you’re saying “OK”.
“Ole Kinderhook”? Yeah, nah. Not in a million years.
