In AMERICAN English.. OK or Okay?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

In AMERICAN English.. OK or Okay? Which is more accepted?

I think it depends on if it's a statement or a question myself.

Statement:
"John fell off the roof, but according to the Dr. he will be ok."

Question:
"I was thinking of adding blue and gold balloons (as decorations) to our Superbowl party if you think that will be okay?"

[Pulpmeister]

It's an interesting word, and one which has become almost universal.

In Australia we have a TV network SBS, which broadcasts TV programmes and movies in their original languages. I have heard "okay" used, with its established meaning, in a Chinese language movie, a French movie and an Italian TV series, and those are just the ones where I noticed and remembered.

If Carl Hiassen's Star Island is anything to go by, okay is already being abbreviated in speech to 'kay. And somewhere I've even seen just 'k'.

So we have the happy circle of an abbreviation turned into a word, and now being abbreviated again.

[crich70]

There are several different theories of where the word came from as well. Very interesting reading.
okay

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

It's an interesting word, and one which has become almost universal.

In Australia we have a TV network SBS, which broadcasts TV programmes and movies in their original languages. I have heard "okay" used, with its established meaning, in a Chinese language movie, a French movie and an Italian TV series, and those are just the ones where I noticed and remembered.

You can add German to your list. Used a lot here.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

You can add German to your list. Used a lot here.

Yep it's mentioned in the Wikipedia article under "International Usage."

[Daniel A Roberts]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Actually it might be. All though the history of the work is not certain, one contender is that it is short for "all correct" which was spelled as "Oll Korrect" or even "Ole Kurreck" by many people in the mid-1800's who were not exactly as literate as general population is today.

Whether or not that history is correct is unknown. There are several other contenders such as a political campaign (OK was initials of the guy running) and Choctaw (Native American tribe) word (okeh). So in short, no one knows

So that is why O.K. can be okay

I'm not picking on you, VydorScope. I promise.



It surprises me sometimes that folks truly don't know where the acronym OK comes from, and how it came to be used. Yes, it goes back to the 1800's.

Our 8th President, Martin Van Buren, used to be nicknamed Old Kinderhead, (he was born in a town called Kinderhook) and he used it in his campaigns for election. Sometime in 1840 - forgive me for not remembering which law it was, it's been awhile since I studied history in college (graduated in 1993) but I do know that he signed a bill into law with his nickname initials... OK. People back then would say the law has been OK'd, and thus the saying was born.

All of the speculative history of the acronym and guesswork over the last few centuries was done by those who didn't know better, and wrote of their theory enough to be mistaken for possible facts.

If you delve into a college level history book on Martin Van Buren, you'll find it there, but not as speculation. That President was a hoot, and he looked like a crazy guy as it was. ^_^

On Edit: Forgot to add that 'Okay' was used when writing an article that would include Oklahoma or any of its cities in the body of text, so folks wouldn't confuse the two and consider it a typo. Both OK and Okay are acceptable.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Daniel A Roberts

[...]It surprises me sometimes that folks truly don't know where the acronym OK comes from, and how it came to be used. Yes, it goes back to the 1800's.[...]

It doesn't seem all that surprising. The Wikipedia article says: "There is no consensus on the origins of "okay." Several possibilities exist." and provides a separate page listing many possibilities, including yours.

Not that I'm suggesting Wikipedia is an infallible source, but at least it does provide references to the etymologies it displays. Can you offer anything substantial in support of the one you like? (ETA: That came out a little badly/bluntly, I just mean that without documentation showing the use was actually picked up from that source, however he signed his name, it is no more convincing that some of the other possibilities.)

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Daniel A Roberts

It surprises me sometimes that folks truly don't know where the acronym OK comes from, and how it came to be used. Yes, it goes back to the 1800's.

It surprises me how you can pick one source out of many and call that authoritative when there are disagreeing sources with equal validity. We do not know for sure where it came from and several well supported options were presented in this thread.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Daniel A Roberts

It surprises me sometimes that folks truly don't know where the acronym OK comes from, and how it came to be used.

Do you have definitive proof of that? You seem to be remarkably certain of it, when all the other sources say that it's disputed.

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

First appeared in popular print--the US press-- as 'O.K.' It is an abbreviation, but not of 'okay'. The "Oll Korrect" version of its origin is most likely the real one, as it first surfaced in print as fad wordplay in the first half of the 19th century in north-east USA. The game was to come up with improbable abbreviations through jocular mis-spellings. There were quite a few other similarly derived abbreviations, but they died out. It was then reinforced by a political campaign where O.K. was part of the slogan. It never died after that, and the 'okay' version is in effect a phonetic spelling-out of the word.

An analagous example is snafu. It is an acronym, one of many which arose in WW2 using the letters 'fu'. They have all faded away except snafu (although fubar lingers as a barely visible ghost).

I'm inclined to doubt the liklihood of Choctaw (okeh), which has quite a different meaning, or Scottish (och aye), which means 'oh yes' as the origin. O K doesn't have a clear path of propagation from these sources.

You can doubtless find words/phrases sounding very much like "okay" in several other languages, but the NE USA fad wordplay origin fits the proven growth pattern of "OK/okay" usage.

Not that it matters. Both are historically correct, and usage would depend on context. My own instinct, specially in dialogue, would be to go with okay, and in narrative, for consistency, stick with okay.

A character might easily use OK, and so would the author, if it is quoting say a hastily scribbled note by a character--or a text message. Whether you do it as O. K. with spaces, O.K. without, or just OK, is a matter of choice.

You could of course use "okelly dokelly"....

I always thought it was related to the famous gunfight at O.K. corral

[Pulpmeister]

Any definitive statement on the origins of this word needs not just to find an early occurrence and say "that's it", but has to do it the way we trace out family tree. Work backwards from now until it disappears.

Only one of the possibles has been traced to a disappearing point, if I can use the phrase, and that's the "Oll Korrect" origin, which began in a humorous mock-illiterate word game in a US newspaper well before Martin Van Buren. The expansion from this source was fully documented by a researcher who wrote an entire book on the matter.

Until someone comes up with an even better origin, and includes a complete paper trail of its growth from that source, the "Oll Korrect" theory still stands as the best documented and most likely.

Of course, an earlier origin and its vector, to use a medical phrase, may have been purely oral, and left no written trail. If that's the case we'll never know. So it is just possible that "okay" was an existing, undocumented word until the Oll Korrect newspaper appearance, and Oll Korrect was backformed from the existing oral okay, but it seems unlikely and is in any case unprovable.

Old Kinderhook does come into it, in the best documented history of the word, not as its creator, but as its reviver.

(I wonder if I'm the only nutter who actually reads dictionaries like novels, starting at page 1? When I bought my 2 volume Shorter OED years ago, I actually did just that. There's not much characterisation, and no plot, but my word, what a vocabulary!)

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

(I wonder if I'm the only nutter who actually reads dictionaries like novels, starting at page 1? When I bought my 2 volume Shorter OED years ago, I actually did just that. There's not much characterisation, and no plot, but my word, what a vocabulary!)

Quite possibly you are. At least I don't remember either reading of or hearing anyone else (in the past) state that they had done so. I can only imagine how many words there are in the 2 Vol. shorter OED as I've heard they make the text in the OED so small you need a magnifying glass to read the entries properly (because they use a fairly small font in order to fit as much text in as possible).

[Daniel A Roberts]

Originally Posted by gmw

It doesn't seem all that surprising. The Wikipedia article says: "There is no consensus on the origins of "okay." Several possibilities exist." and provides a separate page listing many possibilities, including yours.

Not that I'm suggesting Wikipedia is an infallible source, but at least it does provide references to the etymologies it displays. Can you offer anything substantial in support of the one you like? (ETA: That came out a little badly/bluntly, I just mean that without documentation showing the use was actually picked up from that source, however he signed his name, it is no more convincing that some of the other possibilities.)

Originally Posted by VydorScope

It surprises me how you can pick one source out of many and call that authoritative when there are disagreeing sources with equal validity. We do not know for sure where it came from and several well supported options were presented in this thread.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you have definitive proof of that? You seem to be remarkably certain of it, when all the other sources say that it's disputed.

Short of traveling back in time to 1992 to look up the bibliography in the college book labeled Advanced American History in our Constitutional Republic, not really. Apologies for growing up and getting an education during a time when a subjective and editable by anyone Internet wasn't available as facts and answers.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Daniel A Roberts

Short of traveling back in time to 1992 to look up the bibliography in the college book labeled Advanced American History in our Constitutional Republic, not really. Apologies for growing up and getting an education during a time when a subjective and editable by anyone Internet wasn't available as facts and answers.

People are actually saying that they don't know the answer and asking you why you are so certain that you are correct. Given your certainty seems to be based on reading one book over twenty years ago, I think we can draw our own conclusions.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Daniel A Roberts

Short of traveling back in time to 1992 to look up the bibliography in the college book labeled Advanced American History in our Constitutional Republic, not really. Apologies for growing up and getting an education during a time when a subjective and editable by anyone Internet wasn't available as facts and answers.

The Internet has many good and bad aspects. One of its most interesting advantages is fast/searchable access to many source that even the very well educated with access to large libraries didn't once have.

One of the difficulties with word etymologies is that discovery of an early use doesn't automatically prove the writer was also the original source. Sometimes a writer is simply reciting word they have heard or seen elsewhere. To take the Van Buren example: it may have been that an "O.K." nickname and signature were considered cute (in vogue) because of preexisting use of OK (which seems like a very politician thing to do). But even if there had been preexisting use, it could be that the Van Buren adoption is what actually led to wider adoption ... or, if people back then paid as much attention to how politicians signed their declarations as they do now, perhaps it had nothing to do with it. So if you're hopping in a time-machine I suggest you need to back much further than 1992 to find convincing answers.