Let's celebrate Okay's Birthday!
[h=2]It's the 177th Birthday of 'Okay'[/h][h=3]The word first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post to make fun of a rival paper.[/h]by Cara Giaimo March 23, 2016
Okay has become one of the more versatile words in the English Language—as used today, it can mean everything from "just fantastic" to "out of bodily danger." But in its early days, the standby was just a dumb joke.
As Allan Metcalf details in OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, okay made its first printed appearance in the March 23, 1839 issue of the Boston Morning Post, as part of a playful diatribe directed at a rival paper, the Providence Journal. After quoting the Journal's description of an outing by the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society, the Post critiqued their account as follows (emphasis ours):
Except that now, after 177 years, it does. Well done, okay. You're fine by us.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/its-the-177th-birthday-of-okay/
[h=2]It's the 177th Birthday of 'Okay'[/h][h=3]The word first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post to make fun of a rival paper.[/h]by Cara Giaimo March 23, 2016
Okay has become one of the more versatile words in the English Language—as used today, it can mean everything from "just fantastic" to "out of bodily danger." But in its early days, the standby was just a dumb joke.
As Allan Metcalf details in OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, okay made its first printed appearance in the March 23, 1839 issue of the Boston Morning Post, as part of a playful diatribe directed at a rival paper, the Providence Journal. After quoting the Journal's description of an outing by the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society, the Post critiqued their account as follows (emphasis ours):
"We said not a word about our deputation passing “through the city” of Providence.—We said our brethren were going to New York in the Richmond, and they did go, as per Post of Thursday. The “Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells,” is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have his “contribution box,” et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward."
Though it's not immediately clear from the context (as The Paris Review puts it, "not many vestiges of this sort of early-nineteenth-century American wit have survived the ages"), the joke here is that "o.k." is supposed to stand for "all correct"—which, of course, it does not, strictly speaking.
Except that now, after 177 years, it does. Well done, okay. You're fine by us.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/its-the-177th-birthday-of-okay/
