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<h2 class="gmail-blog__title">Happy 179th, OK!</h2>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_51269" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-alignleft" style="width:230px"><a href="http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2018/03/4302OB.jpg"><img class="gmail-wp-image-51269" alt="4302OB" src="http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2018/03/4302OB.jpg" width="220" height="298"></a><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><small>Allen Walker Read (Columbia U.)</small></p></div>
<p><span class="gmail-dropcap">M</span>arch 23 marks the most important anniversary in American English. It’s the 179th birthday of America’s greatest word: OK.</p>
<p>OK Day isn’t a holiday — at least not yet. We don’t celebrate it with
banners, salutes, toasts, poems, or parades. But that’s OK.</p>
<p>In fact, as we go about our business on March 23, we hardly notice
the big day at all. No harm done, though; it’s still OK. And that’s one
reason that OK is our greatest word.</p>
<p>We happen to know an unusual amount about the birth and early years
of OK, thanks to the painstaking research of Allen Walker Read in the
1960s. Actually, “pleasure-taking” would be more accurate, since Read, a
professor at Columbia and the leading expert on historical American
English, delighted in poring over long-ago newspapers and other
publications. Long before the internet, he was a human precursor of an
electronic search engine, indefatigably reading through volumes of old
publications, whether on microfilm or paper.</p>
<p>Thanks to Professor Read, we have a picture of the very birth of OK. It was on Page 2 of the <em>Boston Morning Post</em>
of Saturday, March 23, 1839. In the course of an involuted and somewhat
obscure running joke about the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society (a group of
young men who actually opposed a recent city ordinance prohibiting the
ringing of dinner bells at lunchtime), the editor, Charles Gordon
Greene, inserted the remark “o. k. – all correct -.”</p>
<p>The joke implied a compliment for readers who knew enough about
spelling to realize that “all” doesn’t begin with o, and “correct”
doesn’t begin with k. So the meaning of “o. k.” would have to be the
contrary of “all correct.”</p>
<p>It’s a joke, a paradox. The rest is linguistic history. (For the full story, you can see my 2011 <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ok-9780195377934?cc=us&lang=en&">book</a>, <em>OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word.</em>)</p>
<p>In Boston in those years, it happens that humorous abbreviations like
“o.k.” and “o.w.” (all right) were all the rage among newspaper wits.
Soon other Boston newspapers picked up “o.k.,” and soon after that the
whole nation, thanks to the mail exchange of newspapers that was a
distant antecedent of the internet.</p>
<p>The next year, “o.k.” gained further widespread use, co-opted as it
was by supporters of President Martin Van Buren, who formed “O.K. Clubs”
in support of his re-election. He was known as “Old Kinderhook,” after
his hometown, Kinderhook, N.Y.</p>
<p>Old Kinderhook lost to William Henry Harrison, but “OK” survived and thrived. In December 1849 the <em>Boston Daily Times</em>
celebrated it with a 116-line poem offering not just the “all correct”
interpretation but nearly two dozen others. Here’s a typical stanza:</p>
<p>The beauteous girls, unconsciously,<br>
Kause many sad regrets,<br>
They love so well to be o.k.,<br>
Such orriblle kokettes!<br>
I know of one whose flaxen hair,<br>
Hangs down o.k., oll kurly;<br>
Her lips the sweets of Eden bear,<br>
And more, – she ne’er speaks surly.</p>
<p>What makes “OK” America’s greatest word, though, is the gradual
development, in the rest of the 19th century, of the meaning we use so
often today. Modern “OK” says that an arrangement or a procedure or an
item — whether a treaty, a lunch date, or a lawnmower — is at least
satisfactory. The genius of OK, reflected in the flawed spelling, is
that the matter under discussion need not be perfect, or even
near-perfect, as long as it meets the minimum standard at hand. If
something is not OK, then it just won’t do.</p>
<p>That’s why, when a friend asks if we’d like to go on a road trip, all
we have to do in assent is say “OK.” We don’t have to specify
“wonderful” or “I suppose” or “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Or if we repair a
broken shoestring, the question is simply, will it be OK?</p>
<p>If you think you can get through a day without saying OK, just try it this Friday, March 23. I bet you can’t do it. OK?</p></div>
>From the Chronicle of Higher Education 3/21/18<br clear="all"><div><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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