O.K.

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Richard Gage wrote:

> According to the Robert MacNeil narrated PBS documentary
> "Story of English," the word "okay" derives from an African
> word that slaves brought to America.

Before we go too far on this thread, let me be one of probably many who
will point out that Allen Walker Read demonstrated conclusively in a
brilliant series of articles in the early 1960s that "O.K." is an
abbreviation of "oll korrect" arising as part of a fad of jocular
abbreviations in the late 1830s.

Barry Popik gets frustrated because there are journalists and others who
don't study his contributions to obscure list servs and obscure
periodicals and thus get the origins of terms like "Windy City" and "hot
dog" wrong.  The story of "O.K." shows that even well-publicized
etymologies don't have that great an impact on the popular mind even after
40 years!

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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