A Quick Lesson

I recently realized that I have gone from typing OK, or Okay, or ok to typing O.K. The reason behind this is actually an interesting story. My husband is currently taking a couple of linguistics classes, so he has shared his newfound love of the English language with me.

Apparently, in the early to mid 1800's, editors had inside jokes about comical misspellings. (Think LOL Catz) One of the jokes was about the phrase "all correct" or "oll korrect." So, they started using "oll korrect," abbreviated O.K., in place of "all correct." Eventually it was used so frequently (written and spoken) that it just became an American colloquialism.

According to Wikipedia, some other examples of the comic misspellings were:

• "know yuse" or "no use" abbreviated K.Y.
• "nuff ced" or "enough said" abbreviated N.C.

Here is the link to the Wikipedia article in case you want further information. They have explained the whole etymology of O.K. a little more eloquently than I have. Based on the article, there are several etymologies that have been debated, but I thought that this one was the most fun.