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what's the favourite expansion of O.K. in your view or from your experiences?

2 Answers

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  • Favorite Answer

    Friend,

    It is said that the word came into existence thus;

    one of the workers who is placed to. check the quality of the articles placed in the box at the final stage (Quality check) is not literate .So he used to write on the box with a pencil or chalk O.K. meaning All Correct ( OLL KERRET);

    There are other answers too .They are as follows ( they are from wiki answers , I am pasting them here under):

    The historical record shows that O.K. appeared as an abbreviation for "oll korrect" (a conscious misspelling of "all correct") in Boston newspapers in 1839, and was reinterpreted as "Old Kinderhook" in the 1840 United States presidential election. Because it is a recent word born of word play, and because it is so widely used, O.K. has also invited many folk etymologies. These competing theories are not supported by the historical written record, except in that folk and joke etymologies influenced the true history of the word. Since the 19th century, the word has spread around the world, the okay spelling of it first appearing in British writing in the 1860s. Spelled out in full in the 20th century, 'okay' has come to be in everyday use among English speakers, and borrowed by non-English speakers.

    Much more specific information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay.

    There is more fanciful and wishful nonsense attached to the etymology of this word than to perhaps any other in the English language. So let me add mine: OK (properly spelled okeh) most likely comes from Gullah, the lingua franca of African slaves in the US.

    it really means OLL KORRECT people wanted to spell the words wrong so thats what it means for example: "how are you?" "oh im o.k.

    Answer

    1. Oklahoma: a state in south central United States

    2. O.K.: an endorsement; "they gave us the O.K. to go ahead"

    3. very well: an expression of agreement normally occurring at the beginning of a sentence

    4. all right: being satisfactory or in satisfactory condition; "an all-right movie"; "the passengers were shaken up but are all right"; "is everything all right?"; "everything's fine"; "things are okay"; "dinner and the movies had been fine"; "another minute I'd have been fine"

    Answer

    Despite the fact that the origin of OK was conclusively established 30 years ago, few etymological dictionaries, even recent ones, give it accurately. On the contrary, some persist in giving equal time to explanations that have been discredited for decades.

    Eric Partridge, in Origins (1983), says OK derives from the OK Club, which supported Martin "Old Kinderhook" Van Buren in 1840. That isn't wrong, but it's only half the story.

    William and Mary Morris, in the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1977), mention the OK Club and give several other theories as well, including the off-the-wall idea that OK comes from "Aux Cayes," a port in Haiti noted for its rum. They imply the matter is still shrouded in mystery.

    Baloney. The etymology of OK was masterfully explained by the distinguished Columbia University professor Allen Walker Read in a series of articles in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964.

    The letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for "oll korrect." They're the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s.

    Read buttressed his arguments with hundreds of citations from newspapers and other documents of the period. As far as I know his work has never been successfully challenged.

    The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes."

    Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, "oll wright," and there was also KY, "know yuse," KG, "know go," and NS, "nuff said."

    Most of these acronyms enjoyed only a brief popularity. But OK was an exception, no doubt because it came in so handy. It first found its way into print in Boston in March of 1839 and soon became widespread among the hipper element.

    It didn't really enter the language at large, however, until 1840. That's when Democratic supporters of Martin Van Buren adopted it as the name of their political club, giving OK a double meaning. ("Old Kinderhook" was a native of Kinderhook, New York.)

    OK became the warcry of Tammany hooligans in New York while beating up their opponents. It was mentioned in newspaper stories around the country.

    Van Buren's opponents tried to turn the phrase against him, saying that it had originated with Van Buren's allegedly illiterate predecessor, Andrew Jackson, a story that has survived to this day. They also devoted considerable energy to coming up with unflattering interpretations, e.g., "Out of

  • 1 decade ago

    okay

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