Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!gmf From: gmf@uvacs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.jokes.d Subject: Word Origins (O.K.) Message-ID: <1553@uvacs.UUCP> Date: Wed, 3-Oct-84 03:33:54 EDT Article-I.D.: uvacs.1553 Posted: Wed Oct 3 03:33:54 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 06:00:27 EDT Lines: 36 O.K., I can't resist any longer. >From Eric Partridge's Origins (copyright 1958-1966): O.K. is prob not, as formerly believed from Choctaw oke , var hoke , meaning 'Yes, it is', but perh rather (as proposed by Allan Walker Read) from the banners of the O.K. Club, the Democratic party's political club of 1840: app for Old Kinderhook , the nickname of Martin van Buren (president of the U.S.A. in 1837-41), whose birthplace was Kinderhook in the State of New York. (The abbreviations are Partridge's). O.K.? On the other hand, one of my dictionaries (Webster's New World, 2nd College Edn, Simon & Schuster, copyright 1970-1982) manages to have it two ways It says first known use is 1839 "as if abbrev. for "oll korrect," facetious misspelling of all correct ", and then goes on to say it was "popularized by use in name of Democratic O.K. Club (1840), in allusion to Old Kinderhook , native village of Martin Van Buren ..." And then there's Brewer's Dictionary (revised by Ivor Evans, copyright 1981). After mentioning that O.K. is "commonly regarded as standing for "Orl [not oll this time] Korrect" ", the authors seem to favor the Van Buren "Old Kinderhook" explanation, and then add: Another suggestion is that it derives from the Wolof language of former West African slaves in which waw kay signified "all right, certainly". So there. Brewer has cried Wolof. Gordon Fisher