3-20-15

Monday is the anniversary of the birth of the expression OK, 176 years ago, on the second page of the Boston Morning Post for Saturday, March 23, 1839. OK began as a joke, a deliberately misspelled abbreviation of “all correct.” And it remained a joke for the better part of a century, even as it was being put to serious use in OK-ing documents, train departures and arrivals, and wholesome products like Pyle’s O.K. Soap.

But that’s not the most important reason for celebrating OK. In all seriousness, OK contributes to making the world a better place, or at least more tolerable.

There was no “gap in the language” that OK was called on to fill. Before 1839, speakers of English (and the many other languages that have adopted OK) got along quite well without it. For an equivalent expression, they could, and we still can, say “all right.” (In the 1830s Boston newspapers had a humorous abbreviation a.w. for “all right,” but that quickly died out. Why OK persisted instead is a whole ‘nother story, having to do in part with the letter K.)