Origin of the word "OK"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve never looked up the word OK before, but decided to today. Interesting…

Origin of OK: Old initials of a phonetic spelling, oll korrect (all correct)

Yes there is an extensive Wikipedia write-up on this!

2

OK.

3

You know, we DO have an Omniscient around here somewhere that looks up this stuff occasionally. Let’s see if I can find…ah, here we go:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/503/what-does-ok-stand-for

4

Ok.

5

Which is the first cite in the Wikipedia article the OP cited.

It’s all turtles from here on down.

6

Your next assignment: “the whole nine yards.”

7

I looked that up in the dictionary. It had a picture of my dick.

8

Heck, there’s a whole book about it.

9

And after that, “14 k of g in a fpd”

10

‘OK’ is an abbreviation for ‘okay’, which is a word derived from the phrase ‘okey doky’ which itself was derived from ‘hunky dory’. ‘Hunky dory’ is an antiquated phrase meaning OK.

11

I did a college paper on the word, “OK” in Composition class. Of course, I didn’t solve any etymological questions, but I was intrigued by the fact that “OK” can be used as practically any part of speech.

12

They couldn’t use a picture of mine, because the phrase isn’t ‘the first nine yards’

13

Tentacles. Why is it always tentacles!!?

14

Good grief!

15

The problem I have with the “Oll Korrect” explanation is that if any other word claimed to be from that kind of origin it would be hotly contested and argued against.

16

Per the column:

17

If you want to know about the origin of O.K., a useful place to start is the Straight Dope column by Cecil Adams:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/503/what-does-ok-stand-for

Then you should read the Wikipedia article:

Then read the articles from American Speech by Allen Walker Reade:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/453580?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

http://www.jstor.org/stable/453285?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Yeah, that means that you’ll either have to find a library with that journal or pay for a download. Sorry, but often a definitive answer to a question requires reading a long article or book. That’s just how it works.

18

The difference, of course, is that it is well documented by Professor Read and others. There is no such documentation for say, * Stack High In Transit*, or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

19

Yup, GuanoLad, and it’s hotly contested and argued against for OK, too. But all of those contestings and arguments have come to naught. It’s like science that way.

20

That’s because google search is keyed to your browser history.