OK, is Martin Van Buren chargeable for the tiny phrase that punches above its weight?

From Buenos Aires to Bangkok, Montreal to Moscow, the languages might differ, however practically each taxi driver or road vendor on the earth understands one phrase made well-known throughout a raucous U.S. presidential marketing campaign practically 200 years in the past.

It is “OK”: a tiny phrase that punches properly above its weight. It means each “yes” and “I understand.” It is a noun: I obtained the OK for this story from my editor; a verb: She OK’d it and an adjective: The story turned out OK.

It is even a easy interjection: OK! Sufficient with the grammar lesson!

NPR’s London-based correspondent Lauren Frayer has reported from dozens of nations in Europe, the Center East and Asia, and she or he says, “no matter my bad language skills, ‘OK’ is sort of universally understood.”

OK is a very American invention. It began out as a joke, however has grow to be some of the extensively used phrases on the planet.

This week’s installment of Phrase of the Week traces its evolution.

The place did OK come from? 

The origin of ‘OK’ remained a thriller for a lot of its existence — and even right this moment, some nonetheless dispute essentially the most accepted rationalization. Over time, theories have abounded: Some traced it to French or Scottish roots. Within the Sixties, folks singer Pete Seeger popularized one other concept, singing that “Choctaw gave us the word OK” — a extensively held perception on the time, however one which in the end proved flawed.

“Early efforts to establish the origin of OK were imaginative at best, without documentation, and often just foolish,” in accordance with a 2011 article within the Dictionaries Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America.

Most students now fall in line behind the conclusions of Allen Walker Learn, a Columbia College English professor who set out within the Sixties to settle the thriller of OK’s origin. He adopted its path again to a playful misspelling of “all correct” as “oll korrect.” The time period first appeared within the Boston Morning Put up on March 23, 1839, though “it had probably been used colloquially before that,” in accordance with Doug Harper, who created the On-line Etymology Dictionary. It germinates from a linguistic fad of the time — a playful pattern not in contrast to Cockney rhyming slang by which folks “would abbreviate common phrases with deliberate, jocular misspellings,” he says.

In July 1839, the phrase seems in a paragraph written by the editor of The Baltimore Solar. He thanks “some anonymous gentleman for a gift of bottles of wine … and he pronounces the wine ‘O.K.,'” Harper says.

But it surely was the next 12 months, 1840, and the reelection marketing campaign of President Martin Van Buren that basically introduced the phrase into its personal. Mark Cheathem, undertaking director of the papers of Martin Van Buren and professor of historical past at Cumberland College, notes that “conveniently … O.K. lined up with a nickname that was attached to Van Buren — ‘Old Kinderhook,'” a reference to the president’s birthplace in Kinderhook, N.Y. Political nicknames have been in vogue on the time, Cheathem provides. Van Buren’s predecessor, Andrew Jackson, was often called “Old Hickory,” and his 1840 rival, William Henry Harrison, was dubbed “Old Tippecanoe.”

Van Buren’s supporters fashioned “O.K. Clubs” aimed toward energizing the candidate’s political base, Cheathem says. Some contemporaneous accounts recommend the golf equipment additionally added “muscle” to the marketing campaign. Van Buren even started signing paperwork with “O.K.” to bolster the affiliation.

Harper notes that OK was wielded by each events within the 1840 election, with some newspapers claiming on the time that it originated from a spelling blunder by Jackson — meant to mock the previous president, a fellow Democrat like Van Buren. The story went that Jackson’s postmaster common, Amos Kendall, was accused of mishandling accounts. When Jackson personally verified them, he instructed that they be bundled and marked “OK” — as a result of, as he mentioned, “Amos is all correct.”

How has OK modified over time? 

For sure, OK caught on. It was simple to say and may very well be utilized in quite a lot of conditions to indicate easy settlement, affirmation, understanding or approval, making it helpful in a technological age that started with Morse code and telegraphs.

“It’s a perfect headline word because it’s so short,” Harper says. “In print it’s difficult to figure out how [to] spell it out,” he says. Then again, “it was also an abbreviation you could write with just two letters … and it covers a lot of ground, meaning-wise.”

Its utilization within the twentieth century grew because of American troopers stationed overseas, says Harper. “If you’re looking for the global spread, I would really start with the two world wars and right after them,” he says.

Round 1945, Harper says he sees examples of “people either celebrating or complaining that the French are starting to use OK, which would be the ultimate [barrier], I suppose, for such American slang.”

Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., lunar module pilot, descends the steps of the lunar module ladder on July 20, 1969, as he prepares to stroll on the moon.

NASA/Getty Pictures/Hulton Archive

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NASA/Getty Pictures/Hulton Archive

In the course of the Sixties, NASA astronauts popularized the phrase “A-OK” to sign that every one programs have been go. And 56 years in the past this week, “OK” was among the many first phrases spoken from Earth to the Moon. As the tv sign switched on and Neil Armstrong ready for his well-known “one small step,” Houston introduced: “OK, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.”

Even so, it hasn’t been all clean crusing for OK. The phrase began out as an abbreviation, or extra exactly, an initialism — the place preliminary letters are pronounced individually (versus an acronym, the place the preliminary letters are pronounced as a phrase). However that is led to confusion about learn how to render it. Is it O.Okay., OK, or okay?

Harper says he prefers “okay” as a result of “it doesn’t break up the page with a lot of capitals,” however NPR largely adheres to Related Press model, which recommends “OK” with no durations.

Why does OK matter right this moment?

At this time, OK is “very probably the most widely recognized word in the world,” in accordance with Merriam-Webster.com.

Though historically it is a phrase that is been spoken greater than written, it exhibits up on lists of essentially the most used SMS phrases, together with its even-shorter — and extra controversial — counterpart, merely “K.” After all, there was the dismissive dis of “OK, Boomer” a number of years in the past.

When you needed to do away with the phrase right this moment, it might be nearly not possible, Harper says. Its imprecision is a plus. “In street talk and casual interactions, vagueness has more value than precision,” he says. “We keep reinventing those [kinds] of words.”