[Ads-l] OK history

[Andy Bach]

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://www.npr.org/2025/07/23/nx-s1-5463788/ok-origin-martin-van-buren

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a

Andy Bach,
afbach at gmail.com
608 658-1890 cell
608 261-5738 wk

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