"I'm good" -- chronology?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/9/2014 10:10 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>No cigar. "Good-o" isn't quite "good."  It's a slang/colloq. idiom of its
>own.

Isn't "-o" a (Australian) suffix applied to
various words ("-o, suffix"; sense 2)?  And isn't
the sense of "good-o" in the quotation is the
same as that of "good" in "I'm good"?  The
quotation is under " jakeloo adj." = derivative
of "jake, adj.", and "I'm jake" would mean " I'm
' Excellent, admirable, fine, "O.K." ’ ".

>"Jakealoo" was primarily a Canadian term of 1914-1918.

I had no interest in "jake[a]aloo"; it was merely
the vehicle for "I'm good[-o]".  (However, the
OED calls it "Austral. and N.Z. slang".)

Joel


>I first noticed "I'm good" as "recently" as 2002-03, spoken by a college
>freshman.  Undoubtedly it's older, but my idiom is still "I'm OK," "I'm
>fine," "I'm all right," and "No, thanks."
>
>She was also the first person I'd ever heard say "It's all good," meaning
>"Everything is going well; all is OK."
>
>By the bye, the now ubiquitous "good to go" came to my attention a few
>weeks before Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The CBS newsman characterized
>ir as an army expression.
>
>JL
>
>
>On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 9:35 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      "I'm good" -- chronology?
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I'm interested in when "I'm good", expressing
> > satisfaction with one's state (e.g. of eating or drinking), became common.
> >
> > The OED has a quotation from 1938, under
> > "jakealoo", and I think no others with this sense:
> > >1938  X. Herbert Capricornia xii. 169  Lambkin,
> > >you're not wounded, are you?’..‘Na­ow! I'm
> > >jakerloo.’ ‘You're what?’ she demanded, looking
> > >scared. ‘Jakerloo Mum, jakerloo.’ ‘What­not a
> > >disease, my darling?’ ‘Na­ow­that's French for “I'm good-o”.’
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org