[Ads-l] OK history

Thu Dec 11 15:26:04 UTC 2025

TL;DR

There are many more printed exx. of "Ki massa " than Smyth's (lone?) "Kay
massa."  (Which he says he heard near Halifax, Va., in 1775).

It doesn't matter to me what the actual ety. of "okay" may be, but consider
the following:

There are really two issues here.

One is the origin of the spelling {O.K.}. The other, more significantly, is
development in English of the phonetic sequence / oU keI/.

/ ke /  in creolized early African-American speech is uniquely recorded,
and then only in the South. (If  /ki / were the etymon of / oU keI /, we
would expect not / oU keI / but / oU ki / - and not the spelling  {O.K.}.)

Importantly, neither {Ki} nor {Kay} seem to have been recorded with a
preceding {oU} (as in "Oh, kay!" or "Oh, ki!").  This isn't to say that it
never happened in real life, only that the writers who recorded "Ki!" and
"Kay!" didn't think it usual.

We have no examples of {Kay}  or (Ki} ever being used as adjectives. This
is a crucial point. "Oll korrekt" is both interjectional and adjectival.

As for {O.K.}, the evidence is clear: the spelling {O.K.} (and its semantic
interpretation as "oll korrekt" / "all correct"  began in Massachusetts.

No exx. of {O.K.} seem to exist before 1839. It was
intentionally introduced and explained as part of a series of similar
jocular novelties (including {N.G.}, 'no go' or 'no good,' also recently
still in circulation).

No ex. of the spelling  {okay} appears to be findable before the 1890s (in
Australia; later in the U.S.). This alone suggests that the partial
orthographic resemblance between "Kay!" and "Okay!" is a coincidence.

Also crucially, not even one pre-1839 ex. of "Kay!" meaning / oU keI / has
been found in white speech, North or South. Written "Kay!" and "Oh, kay!"
in white speech should have preceded {O.K.} if  / keI / were really the
etymon. But there seem to be no natural exx. of "Oh, kay!" anywhere.

Moreover, the manifestation, in both white and black speech, of
interjectional / keI /, / m keI / and  / n keI / is very recent and appears
to be limited to younger speakers. Modern aphetic " 'kay!" thus has no
evidentiary connection with creole "Kay!"

If / oU keI / had significant circulation anywhere before {O.K.} in the
meaning "all correct; right; quite satisfactory, etc." before its newspaper
appearance in 1839, there should be some clear evidence of it. (Even a
letter to an 1839 newspaper claiming to recall it from an earlier date
would count as evidence, albeit dubious without confirmation.)  But there
is none.

It would be  symbolic and satisfyingly ironic if American / oU keI / in its
usual meanings came from Africa. But the evidence - and there's lots of it
- is otherwise.

JL

On Wed, Dec 10, 2025 at 2:18 PM Gordon, Matthew <gordonmj at missouri.edu>
wrote:

> It may or may not be relevant to interpreting this passage, but there is
> no comma between “Kay” and “massa” in the original text. J. L. Dillard
> frequently quoted the passage in his work, and he seems to have added that
> comma.
>
> Original text on Google Books:
>
> https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Tour_in_the_United_States_of_America/cCUwAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
>
> Matt Gordon
>
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Z S <
> 000020c279e4c7e1-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 11:19 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: OK history
>
> WARNING: This message has originated from an External Source. This may be
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>
> The earliest example, *ke* (transcribed "kay" in the written record),
> occurs in the speech of Native Black Americans in 1784 and predates the
> Boston Morning Post "source" theory cited below from March 23, 1839, by
> over half a century.
>
> "Kay, massa (says he), you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up
> into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad."
> Smyth 1784, 121
>
> The above example (which I know many if not most list members are well
> aware of) from Native Black American speech documented by Smyth in 1784 is
> semantically and contextually identical to the Kikongo *nge* 'yes',
> 'indeed', 'affirmative', 'so...';  Bentley documents its variants as *nga,
> inga, ngeta,* and *ika*. I believe Laman also mentions a Kikongo variant
> *eka* with the very same meaning.
>
> Laman states (under *ngeta*) it is "used to introduce a remark, express an
> opinion or give a polite response", which matches the use documented in
> Native Black American speech in 1784.
>
> I remember reading an exchange on this very same mailing list some years
> ago about the prenasalized *nke* (I believe the person on this mailing list
> wrote "unkay" or "mmkay", but I'd have to search my notes) in which list
> members mentioned its notable prevalence among Native Black Americans in
> particular. This is also worth noting as it pertains to the Kikongo *nge*
> 'yes', 'indeed', 'affirmative', 'so...'.
>
> I've seen implausible Wolof theories bandied about as a straw man to make
> African etymologies altogether appear comical or far-fetched, while both
> the 1784 occurrence in Native Black American speech and the widespread
> Kikongo *nge* (also *ngeta*) are conveniently ignored or willfully omitted
> from the discourse to make a "playful misspelling of oll korrect" as a
> source more easily accepted by the public. Even the NPR write-up makes no
> mention of the earlier 1784 citation in Native Black American speech.
>
> Regards,
> ZS
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 4:55 PM Andy Bach <
> 00001cec09419685-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > Most scholars now fall in line behind the conclusions of Allen Walker
> Read,
> > a Columbia University English professor who set out in the 1960s to
> settle
> > the mystery of OK's origin. He followed its trail back to a playful
> > misspelling of "all correct" as "oll korrect." The term first appeared in
> > the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, although "it had probably been
> > used colloquially before that," according to Doug Harper, who created the
> > Online Etymology Dictionary. It germinates from a linguistic fad of the
> > time — a playful trend not unlike Cockney rhyming slang in which people
> > "would abbreviate common phrases with deliberate, jocular misspellings,"
> he
> > says.
> >
> >
> https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2025%2F07%2F23%2Fnx-s1-5463788%2Fok-origin-martin-van-buren&data=05%7C02%7CGordonMJ%40MISSOURI.EDU%7Ced694c2e3f7d4cee042d08de38102ce3%7Ce3fefdbef7e9401ba51a355e01b05a89%7C0%7C0%7C639009839550769944%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C80000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=iD6jwYupzYLo0Lrg96pPPK6VQVLqPDEifKcjzlyfJrE%3D&reserved=0
> <https://www.npr.org/2025/07/23/nx-s1-5463788/ok-origin-martin-van-buren>
> >
> > --
> >
> > a
> >
> > Andy Bach,
> > afbach at gmail.com
> > 608 658-1890 cell
> > 608 261-5738 wk
> >
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