Andrew Jackson and O.K.

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

>>My questions are: first - did ex-Pres
Jackson really do this? (because the phrase apparently
originated in 1839, this use would have been in the
years after his presidency) ... and second - if so,
did he pick up the practice directly from the
newspapers, or did "ok" quickly become a popular
phrase in general use?<<

Allen Walker Read's five articles on O.K. in American Speech are awesomely
thorough and have well stood the test of time. That story about Jackson's
O.K. is a piece of urban (or maybe we should say rural, for those days)
folklore, first put in print in 1840 just a year after the first real
occurrence of O.K. The New York Morning Herald of March 30, 1840, published
an entertaining but bogus story of Jackson ordering certain papers to be
marked O.K. and saying, "By the eternal, Amos is Ole Kurrek (all correct) and
no mistake."

Read says: "Building upon the 'all correct' meaning that already was well
known, the journalist constructed a witty story that poured scorn upon the
great hero of the Democratic party. This is the earliest known suggestion of
any connection of O.K. with Andrew Jackson. It seems to me a sheer invention.
. . . The story was taken up and widely believed as the sound information
about O.K. Investigators should search carefully for such evidence, but until
it is found the only safe position is to regard the story as a fabrication
made up in 1840 to further political interests. It is important to state this
strongly, because so much erroneous writing about O.K. has depended upon the
utterly unproved connection with Andrew Johnson."

- "The Second Stage in the History of O.K.," American Speech 38.2 (May 1963):
89-90.

More than 30 years later, Barry Popik had a splendidly illustrated article on
"The Story of O.K." in The Keynoter 96.2 (Fall 1996), journal of the American
Political Items Collectors. He added some significant citations but confirms
Read's findings.

- Allan Metcalf