WHERE DID THE EXPRESSION "OK" COME FROM?

"It's amazing that we ever got along without it at all. But we did until 1839

"OK" is the all-purpose American expression that became an all-purpose English expression that became an all-purpose expression in dozens of other languages. It can be an enthusiastic cheer (A parking spot! OK!), an unenthusiastic "meh" (How was the movie? It was…OK.), a way to draw attention to a topic shift (OK. Here's the next thing we need to do), or a number of other really useful things. It's amazing that we ever got along without it at all. But we did. Until 1839.

There may be more stories about the origin of "OK" than there are uses for it: it comes from the Haitian port "Aux Cayes," from Louisiana French au quai, from a Puerto Rican rum labeled "Aux Quais," from German alles korrekt or Ober-Kommando, from Chocktaw okeh, from Scots och aye, from Wolof waw kay, from Greek olla kalla, from Latin omnes korrecta. Other stories attribute it to bakers stamping their initials on biscuits, or shipbuilders marking wood for "outer keel," or Civil War soldiers carrying signs for "zero killed."

The truth about OK, as Allan Metcalf, the author of OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, puts it, is that it was "born as a lame joke perpetrated by a newspaper editor in 1839." This is not just Metcalf's opinion or a half remembered story he once heard, as most OK stories are. His book is based in the thorough scholarship of Allen Walker Read, a Columbia professor who for years scoured historical sources for evidence about OK, and published his findings in a series of journal articles in 1963 to 1964.

IT STARTED WITH A JOKE

OK, here's the story. On Saturday, March 23, 1839, the editor of the Boston Morning Post published a humorous article about a satirical organization called the "Anti-Bell Ringing Society..."
(more on YAHOO online)

____________________________________________________________________________

(LOLOL--EVEN TO CLICK THE LINK BUTTON RIGHT NOW I HAD TO PRESS "OK"--USEFUL IT IS-NO MATTER WHERE IT REALLY CAME FROM)

SIDEBAR: I HAD A BRAZILIAN FRIEND WHO SAID NEVER TO MAKE THE "OK" GESTURE WITH MY HANDS IF I WAS EVER IN BRAZIL--APPARENTLY IT MEANS "YOUR MAMA"--OUCH!