Mental Floss’s brief history of the term “OK” is more than just all right.
Using Allan Metcalf’s OK: The Improbably Story of America’s Greatest Word as a source, it covers not only the term’s birth, but also how it went the 19th-century version of viral and attained an almost miraculous staying power.
Our rating: Overall, keen.
One response
According to Robert Claiborne, “Our Marvelous Native Tongue”, page 205, “the prize Africanism in American English . . . is ok” … “its source was unquestionably one of various West African expressions such as o-ke or waw-ke, meaning O.K.”
Every few years some white people come up with a stupid version of using two initials to make a word. White people DID NOT invent everything!
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