Let’s just assume you’ve said it a fair amount of times without even realizing it, OK? The origins of the commonly known phrase “O.K” are a bit odd but bear with me. Would it surprise you that it started off as a newspaper joke in Boston, then made its way into Martin Van Buren’s presidential campaign? Or that it also acted as a telegraph transmission? Did it originate from the Civil War? And if so, did it mean "0 Kill" or a nickname for biscuits?
The popular work “OK” actually started as a joke at a newspaper company in Boston (the Boston Morning Post) in 1839 created by Charles Gordon Greene. The term originally came out as “Oll Korrect”. This is similar to abbreviations such as “LOL” or “OMG”.
The word later gained popularity when Martin Van Buren ran for reelection in 1840. The man was given the nickname “Old Kinderhook” since he was born in Kinderhook, New York. This led to the play on words, “Martin Van Buren is OK”. As his campaign went on, the nicknames grew nastier despite the clever word play. Martin Van Buren may have lost the 1840 election, but his campaign helped gain more popularity for the word “OK”.
A couple years later, the telegraph became more commonly used. Limiting long distance communication to only dots and dashes, people needed a short, concise word to tell the other everything was good. Enter “OK”. The word was easy to send out and hard to misunderstand. (O = ---, K = -.-) The terminology helped railroad communication especially when stations need to get in contact with each other. Sometimes trains wouldn’t even leave the station unless the received the “OK” to do so.
There are many speculations about the beginnings of this everyday word, but this is the most commonly agreed on path between people and historians.
The word has evolved from a fad or slang to an actual English word, making it an American, possibly even universal, speaking essential to this day.
Sources
https://www.scienceabc.com/social-science/what-is-the-origin-of-the-word-ok.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UnIDL-eHOs
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-word-ok-was-invented-175-years-ago-180953258/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/50042/whats-real-origin-ok
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+word+ok&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_xvHwh4blAhVPLK0KHdn1CGQQ_AUIESgB&biw=1280&bih=668#imgrc=mJ9FV7pfzK6qOM:
I really like the way you wrote this it gives off a tone of familiarity which makes it feel more personal. I vaguely remember learning about this last year in my hgap class during the language unit and this was a really good refresher. It's interesting to think about how I and several other people use "Ok" all the time but don't know what it stands for. The point that I found especially interesting was about how it was used commonly in telegrams. I think this cemented it use in conversation as well since as you stated it was simple and straight to the point. Similarly to how other abbreviations used in text like "omg" also can be heard frequently in conversation although not as much as Ok.
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