OK: It ain't just a state over Texas.

Does "OK" stand for something? Is it an acronym? Is it an abbreviation? What's the deal?

Well, Cecil Adams at The Straight Dope has a great explanation of the etymology of "OK":

"The letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for 'oll korrect.' They're the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s."

OK? OK.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I heard about OK is that it was used by first time when USA was on civil war. So, when one team (Don't remember wich of both) came home with nobody dead they putted an advice that said 0 Kills. They reduced it to the actual expression 0K, but the O isn't the letter o but a cero (0). And it means that everything is fine; nobody died.

Thor said...

It's my belief that the origin of "OK" is unknown, with many theories being touted. There's a Wikipedia article which explains many proposed etymologies.

DougHodges said...

The way I learned it was back in 1840 during the Presidential campaign when Van Buren was running as "Old Kinderhook" & his New York supporters formed the OK Club, which became a Democratic rallying cry. Van Buren lost but OK seemed to hang on.

Granny said...

Interesting - learned something new today!

Anonymous said...

fuck of gringo