Language can sometimes spread like wildfire. There are certain phrases and catchwords that seem to catch the imagination in just the right way and explode onto the scene. Many of them will fade over time. Some will become mainstays in human communication.
I heard a radio broadcast that talked about one such word. It may have started in the Boston area. It's actually one of the few words that can actually be understood nearly universally. It seems people on every continent can use and understand exactly what it means (even if they don't speak your language)!
According to this story from WGBH, in the 1830s, Boston newspapers decided that they really liked abbreviations. With our texting culture (LOL), we may be familiar with the desire to communicate swiftly and efficiently. All of this abbreviation then came to its most famous achievement:
Amidst this abbreviation fad, on March 23, 1839, came a humorous article on the second page of the Boston Morning Post where writer and editor Charles Gordon Greene abbreviated the phrase “all correct” with two letters - OK.
"And of course readers were expected to join in the humorous notion or acknowledgement that OK is an abbreviation for all correct that is not correct, since 'all' does not begin with 'O' and 'correct' does not begin with 'K.'"
It was a little bit of wordplay that would take the world by storm.
"It happened because of newspapers," Metcalf said. "And one of the things that newspapers would do, they picked up things from other newspapers and that spread throughout the country quickly enough thanks to the newspaper exchange."
The term also got a surge in exposure during the 1940 Presidential election, when Martin Van Buren — also known as Old Kinderhook — running for the presidency, incorporated it in his campaign slogan: "Old Kinderhook is OK."
It seems that presidential election helped the story go national. While there were other potential origin stories, none of them seem as compelling.
As the 20th century dawned, the word continued to surge — and morph. People began spelling it “okay” to make it more word-like, created superlatives like A-OK, and variations like Okey Dokey, mmmkay, or the text-friendly, “K.” Today OK is regularly cited by linguists and writers as the world’s single most recognized word.
"If you’re talking with somebody and you don’t know that persons language, if that person knows 'OK,' which is rather likely, you can usually get a whole message across with nothing but 'OK' and various inflections of your voice and gestures," Metcalf said.
Metcalf is so enamored with this little expression that could, that he’s dubbed it America’s greatest word – in part, because he believes those two simple letters are an elegant expression of who we are.
"If something is OK for Americans then it’s working," he said. "You’ve succeeded with it. You can of course refine it, but it's good enough. OK allows you to say something positive for something that is less than perfect. I’m not a philosopher, but I argue that’s the American philosophy in two letters."
OK. Seems to work for me!
Here is the link to the full story: How Boston Created 'The American Philosophy In 2 Letters' — OK? | WGBH News
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