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A Boston newspaper editor made a dumb joke in 1839. It became the world’s most popular word.
On March 23, 1839, Boston Morning Post editor Charles Gordon Greene was writing a satirical piece making fun of the Providence Journal. At the end of a throwaway paragraph, he stuck in an abbreviation: “o.k.” It stood for “oll korrect,” which was an intentionally misspelled version of “all correct.”
That joke became the most widely used expression in the English language.
Greene wasn’t being random. According to History.com, the late 1830s were in the grip of an abbreviation craze, especially among young, educated elites in Boston. The twist was that they deliberately misspelled words first, then abbreviated them. It was the 1800s version of texting slang, and apparently it was hilarious at the time.
A woman on her laptop gives the ‘OK” sign at her desk. Photo credit: Canva
Other abbreviations from that era included “KG” for “know go” (no go), “KY” for “know yuse” (no use), “OW” for “oll wright” (all right), and “SP” for “small potatoes.” Most of these died out almost immediately. OK should have died with them.
But it got a second life thanks to politics. When Martin Van Buren ran for president in 1840, his supporters formed the “O.K. Club,” playing off his nickname “Old Kinderhook” after his New York hometown. Meanwhile, the opposing Whig Party weaponized OK, claiming Van Buren’s mentor Andrew Jackson had invented it to cover up his terrible spelling.
Van Buren lost the election. OK won everything else.
By the end of 1839, OK had already appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, the New York Evening Tattler, and the Philadelphia Gazette. After the 1840 campaign circus, it spread into everyday American speech and never left.
For over a century, nobody knew where OK actually came from. Theories included a popular army biscuit manufacturer named Orrin Kendall, a Haitian port called Aux Cayes known for its rum, a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk, and President Woodrow Wilson’s personal favorite: a Choctaw word he spelled “okeh.”
It wasn’t until the 1960s that Columbia University linguist Allen Walker Read traced OK back to that 1839 Boston Morning Post article. He spent years systematically disproving every other theory and published his findings in 1963-64. The mystery was solved. A throwaway joke about intentional misspelling had become one of America’s greatest linguistic exports.
Today, OK works as an affirmation (“Can I go?” “OK.”), an exclamation (“I got the job! OK!”), a description of mediocrity (“How was the movie?” “OK.”), and about a dozen other things depending on your tone of voice. It’s understood across languages and cultures. It shows up in text messages, business emails, casual conversation, and formal agreements.
All because Charles Gordon Greene thought it would be funny to write “oll korrect” in a newspaper 186 years ago.
The post A Boston newspaper editor made a dumb joke in 1839. It became the world’s most popular word. appeared first on Upworthy.
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