Splendiferous Speech by Rosemarie Ostler

Author:Rosemarie Ostler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2018-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

This 1840 anti–Van Buren cartoon incorporates OK into a signpost pointing the president back to his hometown of Kinderhook, as former president Andrew Jackson pulls him toward the White House. Captioned A HARD ROW TO HOE, the cartoon also points out the obstacles in the way of Van Buren’s reelection, including hard cider, log cabins, and a bundle of financial troubles labeled SUB TREASURY. Prints and Photographs Division: Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-9463

During the 1850s, the periods after each letter were often dropped, obscuring the word’s origin. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was sometimes spelled okay, making it look even more like a regular English word. The adjective okay, as in an okay time, appeared in print in the 1870s, and the verb to okay was in use by the 1880s. The 1930s saw okey-dokey and the 1960s A-OK.5

By the twentieth century, even the English had adopted it, although not without the usual moans about Americanisms. Laments one letter to the editor in 1954, “‘All right’ has already virtually disappeared from our language, killed by the monstrosity ‘O.K.’”6 Complaints, as always, were in vain. As with other useful Americanisms, once okay gained a toehold, it was in the language to stay. Strict parents, teachers, and copyeditors on both sides of the Atlantic fought the battle for all right into the late twentieth century, but okay only gained in popularity. In fact, it’s so handy as a casual affirmative that languages around the world have embraced it—a newsworthy achievement for a linguistic joke.

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