[Ads-l] OK history

[Jonathan Lighter]

FWIW, I've found no ex. of "oll korrect" ("...korrekt") earlier than the
1839 "OK."

JL

On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 10:55 AM 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://www.npr.org/2025/07/23/nx-s1-5463788/ok-origin-martin-van-buren
>
> --
>
> a
>
> Andy Bach,
> afbach at gmail.com
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