Mr. Ryan-Head
29 September, 2005
The origin of "OK"
Due to sheer randomness and time wasting web putzing, I have come across a wonderful little nugget about my two favorite letters in the alphabet: OK. The origin of this word/acronymn/thing is thoroughly described at The Straight Dope, but I found a few facets of its beginning particularly of note (which I will share with you presently).OK was devised during a time when abbreviations of common phrases using not so common spellings were all the rage (interestingly enough, over 175 years ago). Things such as NG ("no go"), SP ("small potatoes"), and OW ("oll wright") were way hip amongst the cool cats of the 1830's, and while many didn't last that long, one of them managed to remain popular: "oll korrect." Weird, eh?
There are many other details about how it became popular during the campaign of Martin Van Buren in 1840, but that's not why I chose to post this nibbit today. I thought it very intriguing that there was such a rage over kooky acronyms so long ago, especially given the current popularity of such gems as OMG, BRB, WTF and the like with our digital communication. I guess we're not as novel as we thought we were... ;-)
Now what about smileys...