OK IS OK
MARCH 23, 1839 OK IS
NOW VERNACULAR
“O. K.” was first
published March 23, 1839 in the Boston Morning Post. It is
meant to
to be the abbreviation for
“oll korrect” a slang misspelling of “all correct” at the
time.
Since then OK has
steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.
Late in the 1830's a
favorite practice among the younger, educated ones, to 'misspell'
and abbreviate words when
talking to one another, they called it 'slang'. Sort of like
'texting' is today.
OK's popularity exploded
when it was printed in the Boston newspaper and then picked up
by politicians of the
time.
Up for reelection was
Martin Van Buren was supported by a group , “The OK Gang” ,
which referred to both the
OK made popular in newspapers and the nickname given
him, “Old Kinderbrook”
for his New York hometown.
Another political party
used OK to belittle Van Buren in some unknown way.
Allen Walker Reed,
linguist and professor at Columbia University, was responsible
for
unraveling the mystery by
dispelling theories on the origins of OK, ranging from , a bisquit
what was called “Orrin
Kendall' by the Army, a Haitian port city, Aux Cayes, famed for
it's
rum to a Choctaw Indian
Chief, Old Keokuk.
Abstract March 23, 2018 by
Harrison H., from www.history.com/thisdayinhistory/ok
by
History.com staff in
2009, for www.iinni.blogspot.com
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