Today’s social media convention pushes you to reading words like ‘HBD’ for Happy Birthday, ‘ATB’ for All the Best and so on. It has become so difficult for the texting generation to type complete words that OK is now just K.
But what the generation doesn’t know, the often under-rated word OK has actually been around for almost two centuries.
Like the present generation that is trying to shorten words to as little as letters, the word OK also has a story where a bunch of youngsters from Boston and New York, back in the 19th century, tried to sound ‘cool’ by shortening words and creating a slang.
While there were quite a few words that formed to be cool, OK lasted for 175 years.
OK is most likely to be the shortened version of ‘All Correct’ pronounced as ‘Oll Korrect’ in the American slang.
A few other words included, ‘N.C’ – ‘Enough Said’ which is pronounced ‘Nuff Ced’ and ‘K.Y’ – No Use, pronounced, ‘Know Yuse’.
While other abbreviations didn’t last long, OK went on to become a huge hit when it appeared in text in the Boston Morning Herald, a popular newspaper back in the 1830s.
Rumour also has it that the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, who was born in Kinderhook, New York, was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, which became ‘OK’. Van Buren’s democratic party supporters cashed in on this and started the ‘O.K club’ during 1940 US elections. Though Van Buren didn’t take the cake, OK became popular.
While this is one amusing story, beyond American English, the word has other origins. The Scottish spell ‘och aye’ or the Greek words for ‘it is good’ being ‘Ola Kala’ while a more interesting story tells of a random freight agent Obediah Kelly who signed his initials on documents he checked off.