INTERESTING NEWS - IT'S 175, okay?

NABRETIRE

INTERESTING NEWS 

IT'S 175, OKAY ?

FOR THE BENEFIT OF 'NABRETIRE' MEMBERS, we furnish hereuder, the HISTORY OF OUR DAY TO DAY USE OF WORD 'OK'.  It was reported that since the first use of the said WORD, it has completed 175 years.  Is it ok? The news item (The Hindu, Sunday, March 23, 2014) is furnished below:

TODAY'S PAPER » NATIONAL

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2014

OK first appeared in print, on page two of The Boston Morning Post.

It’s 175, okay?

Whatever you’re doing this Sunday, wherever you might be, 

take a moment to reflect on the most popular word in the 

English language, OK?

It will be 175 years since OK — or, as some prefer, okay — 

first appeared in print, on page two of The Boston Morning 

Post , then one of the most popular newspapers in the 

United States.

“I think OK should be celebrated with parades and 

speeches,” Allan Metcalf, an English professor in Illinois 

who is the world’s leading authority on the history and 

meaning of OK, told AFP. “But for now, whatever you do [to 

mark the anniversary], it’s OK.”

In his 2001 book, OK: The Improbable Story of America's 

Greatest Word , Mr. Metcalf calls OK “the most frequently 

spoken [or typed] word on the planet” — used more often 

than “Coke” or an infant’s “ma.”

Concise and utilitarian, it’s quintessentially American in its 

simplicity. Etymologically, it has no direct relationship with 

Latin or Greek or any other ancient tongue.

Oxford Dictionaries, on its website, rejects speculation that 

OK is derived from the Scottish expression “och aye,” the 

Greek “ola kala” [it’s good] or the French “aux Cayes,” which 

refers to a Haitian port famous for its rum.

Rather, it favours a theory — shared by Mr. Metcalf — that 

it’s an abbreviation of “orl korrekt,” a derivative of “all correct” 

from the 1830s when jokey misspellings were all the rage, 

like Internet memes are today.

Credit for finding its first use in print goes to Allen Walker 

Read, a Columbia University professor who died in 2002 


after a lifetime interest in ‘OK.’ It appeared in the Post in the 


context of an article concerning the ironically named Anti-


Bell Ringing Society, founded in 1838 to oppose a 

municipal law in Boston prohibiting the ringing of dinner 

bells.

Society members were en route to New York, it reported, 

adding cryptically that if they should transit Rhode Island en 

route home, the newspaper editor in the New England state 

might well “have the ‘contribution box,’ et ceteras, o.k. — all 

correct — and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.”

But OK truly entered the national lingua franca in 1840, 

when spin doctors for Democratic presidential nominee 

Martin Van Buren, a native of Kinderhook, New York, 

insisted to voters that it meant “Old Kinderhook.”

Today, OK is used “to ask for or express agreement, 

approval or understanding” or to add emphasis to a 

sentence, as in “I’m going to stay here, OK?” according to 

its entry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

I’m OK, You’re OK , published in 1967, remains one of the 

bestselling self-help books of all time, while Rodgers and 

Hammerstein declared Oklahoma in song to be OK! in their 

eponymous 1943 musical.

Internationally, OK has travelled remarkably well on the 

wings of American popular culture — and found a niche in 

the digital era, fitting easily into 140-character Twitter and 

text messages.

“It’s a nice, short abbreviation and it fits abbreviations in 

other languages,” said Mr. Metcalf, the executive secretary 

of the American Dialect Society who teaches at MacMurray 

College. “If you’re speaking with somebody who has a 

totally different language than you, chances are you can get 

by with gestures and OK in various tones of voice.”

— AFP

OK first appeared

in print, on page two of The Boston Morning Post .