Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: History of OK

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Is OK the best word? It's certainly one of the most versatile. Check the interesting history of this weird contraction.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, standing in for Dave and that makes the short stuff. Okay. Mm. Thanks to Dave Ruse and Howstuffworks.com and Grammarly for this, because we're talking about okay, which some people say is one of the most versatile and one of the greatest words in the English language.

And I don't disagree. I don't either. I say like more, but I think okay is probably second in my vocabulary Yeah, absolutely Grammarly will tell you that okay can be used in myriad ways and it's a very versatile word It can be used as an adjective. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, that's just okay Like how is it? Okay. Right, exactly. It can be an interjection.

Okay. Okay, let's talk. Or someone's talking too much. Okay, okay. Right? Yeah. It can be used in the verb sense. Like, give me an example.

That guy's really okaying that boat all over the lake. Okay, that's not that's not right more like It's being okay as we speak. Oh good. Yes. Thank you All right, or it can be used in the noun sense You want to try that one? I'm having An okay for breakfast Nope We got the okay. That's all good having an okay for breakfast. Nope.

We got the okay, it's all good. Yeah. I know, so boring. Okay, no, it's not boring, I'm just disgusted with myself. So very versatile word and the origin of okay, I don't even think we should go over all the kind of dumb ideas people have had, because we're pretty sure we know where it came from, right? Okay.

See? So, yeah, we know where it came from almost certainly. Thanks to an etymologist named Alan Walker Reed, who at some point apparently put down his insects in his lab and started researching word origins. I don't know why. But Reed was working back in the 1960s and he essentially through really hardcore old-timey pre-internet research. Traced back the origin of

okay, the letter O and the letter K and the meaning of it as we understand it. And it's got one heck of a rump slap in origin, if you ask me. Yeah, he also had a newsletter called Stuff You Should Know that ran for 15 years, but he only put out four topics because it took him so long. Yeah, it took a while, but this is just 60s even. That joke was not okay. It was okay. Yeah, it was okay. It was okay

So what he found out is the following in the early 19th century when printing was sort of a new sort of Not new, but it was cheaper to do than it had been previously and there was an explosion of printing and one of the things that people started putting out were Something on the penny press like these uh... sort of rags that were had a little bit of news to them but also some opinion stuff some jokes uh... this is what's trending this is a little witty poem you know just little things like that

uh... they've kind of sort of like is it to the internet of the eighteen thirties and there was a lot of back and forth about this stuff through the editors of these penny papers. I guess they would sort of respond to one another through their own penny papers. Yeah, they would trash talk one another.

Kind of like our old stale rivalry with John Strickland. Oh gosh. Kind of like that, right? So there was that trash talking or that joking, injoking back and forth between editors of these penny papers, coincided with a trend that

recalled a craze in starting in the summer of 1838. That's how good this guy's research was. He pinned it down to that. Starting in Boston, that people how good this guy's research was. He pinned it down to that. Starting in Boston, that people started using abbreviations for everything. It was like they thought that was so hilarious in 1830s, Boston. Yeah, which is funny. You might think now is so over abbreviated, like this point in time, with texting in the internet with L.O.Ls and I don't even know what half of a mean I feel like. L.O. means lots of love. Lots of love, okay, that's what I thought. But the craze started back then and here's just a few examples that Dave dug up. Let me see, D-L-E-C, do let them come or G-T-D-H-D. Give the devil is due, stuff like that. Or WYG, will you go?

Oh, will you go? Yes. And so this started thanks to Charles Gordon Green, editor of Boston's Morning Post back in 1838. And by the following year, this initial language is what they called it. It spread from Boston all the way to New York and elsewhere. It was a jam. It was a craze. And people were writing about it. People were using it. So you have part one of where OK came from. You have an abbreviation craze that is being

spreading like wildfire thanks to the penny papers that you can find in any major city in the US now. That's right. And we're gonna take a break and we'll tell you about another craze that also coincided that made okay okay right after this. Chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, On his new podcast, six degrees with Kevin Bacon, join Kevin for inspiring conversations with celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like musical artist, Jewel. And what an equal opportunist misery is, it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless, if you are raised in misery systems, it's perpetual.

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When you have her confronted, instead of stopping, she finds ways to be sneakier about it and keeps going. I remember one time, Stuart lost, like, about 8 million, and General is very upset and she came down to the office late at night with coach Yall is screaming at him asking him where their money is. Would you call her a con artist? I would just call her a con. She's not very much of an artist. Listen to Queen of the Con season 4 the Unreal Housewife on the iHeartRadio app Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck?

It's stuff you should know. Don't you shut down! All right. All right, so several things align here to make okay stick. We talked about the abbreviation craze, but no one is going around saying GTDHD, give the devil is do, most of these fell by the wayside over time.

Okay, did not, because okay, also coincided with another weird trend which was purposefully misspelling things. It was just funny I guess I don't know if it was like a bit where you were trying to appear like you were just a big dummy or what but it became a thing where people would write and especially in these these penny press papers, they would misspell things. They would write an opinion piece or like a letter and things were purposely misspelled

and people thought it was hysterical. Yeah. And so you got things like, all of a sudden you had abbreviations that were based on misspellings, like KG for NoGo, which would be obviously in OGO instead of K and OW go, but they would still say KG and people just rolled with laughter.

Yeah, no K and OW stood in for No, NO a lot. So NoGo, NoUse was actually KY. They spelled use with the Y at the beginning. And you know, it's funny is quite a few times over the years people have emailed this and done SYS in by accident. And it's sort of kind of right aligned with this, you know. Yeah, some people also do SUSK. Oh yeah, I've seen that too. Which makes sense. Took me years to figure that one out. I thought it was fat finger or something. But as far as our episode is concerned,

when OW came along, the origins of OK started to blossom. Now, started to sprout from the ground, like a seedling with just one leaf attached. That's right right because OW stood for all right all being spelled OLL because and right being spelled WRIGHT because misspelling things was hysterical. A layer, yes, right? So are you following this people? It's a little confusing, I think. Again, they thought this was witty and

it was a huge trend. And finally, in 1839, March 21st, heads up to Allen Walker Read again for real. Pin pointed it. There was another etymologist that said he read must have spent hundreds of hours digging through tons and tons of physical newspapers, journals, private letters, and other documents. What that man did was absolutely astounding.

And that guy, and a totally Lieberman, the linguist and translator from University of Minnesota was absolutely right. And what Reed did, he found the day when OK was born. Yeah, the very day, because there was some trash talking going on. The aforementioned editor of the Morning Post, Charles Gordon Green, was trash talking with the Providence Journal Road Island editor. And there was something about the, there was a satirical citizens group called the Anti-Belringing Society in Boston,

the ABRS. Green was a member. The editor of the Providence Rhode Island Journal was making fun of Green, and they were kind of going back and forth, and what happens at the end of this exchange? Green says, all correct, but he spelled it O.K. as an OLLK-O-R-R-E-C-T. He abbreviated purposely misspelled and gave birth to O-K. That's right. So in this case, it was lowercase with periods, little O dot, little K dot. And this might have actually gone away again as well, even though it started being used a little bit in these penny rags. But along comes another coincidence with Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, was running for re-election, I believe. He was from the small town of

Kinderhook, New York, and like Andrew Jackson and Old Hickory, he took on the nickname Old Kinderhook and then what happened? Well, that became his campaign slogan. Okay, is okay. Old Kinderhook is okay. And by this time, this is the 1840 presidential election, he lost a William Henry Harrison. I died in 30 days. And but the okay managed to live on as exactly the meaning that we use it for today. Like, okay, that's great. And it's actually evolved. I think they meant it much more enthusiastically. Like he is okay. But the linguist, well, I guess he's the late linguist, Alan Metcalf. I think he really did a great job of getting to the heart of what OK does now.

We can use it enthusiastically. Sometimes when we do that, we're using it actually sarcastically or telling somebody to get off our back. But more often than not, as Metcalf pointed out, it's neutral. Right. And he really got to it when he kind of,

I should say nailed it on the head when he identified it as neutral, right? Yeah, but an affirmative neutral. So it's an affirmative, it affirms, it's a reply that affirms something, but not with any kind of enthusiasm. Right, so he was saying like, it filled a void.

Yeah, and a void. Yeah. And a void that we didn't even know we needed because you could do the same thing. You could affirm something in the positive with yes, good, fine, excellent. All right. Ma, wasn't around yet, I guess. But all of those say, not only yes,

I'm affirming this, but yes, I say, I think this is is actually a good thing or a positive thing. It has some veneer to it. Okay, it's basically just like copy. I know what you're saying. Yes, go ahead and do that. I'm not saying I think what you're doing is great, but if you're asking me for permission, I just gave you permission with just okay. And that's just one use of it as being neutral. But I think that's a great, I think that was a lot of great insight he had. No, totally.

If you're wondering about OKAY lowercase, there are different rules. OKAY came after o.k. But if you're a writer, the writers use things called style guides. If you write for newspapers or when we used to write for howofWorks.com, we, what do we use? Do you remember? AP.

We used AP. So AP uses uppercase, okay, no periods. The Chicago Manual of Style, which is another popular one, uses both. They usually capitalize okay and periods are not necessary but acceptable. Grammarly for their part says okay when you you know uppercase okay for the beginning of a sentence but lowercase okay, AY otherwise. And if you're wondering overall they found that uppercase okay is used about a third of the time and edited writing and okay AY about two thirds of the time which surprised me because I never ever write or type out okay. Why I do that's what I use the most

Oh, I capital okay for me baby. It seems aggressive to me So I tend to shy away from that Well, yeah, because now that capitals have taken on aggressive to me. So I tend to shy away from that. Well, yeah, because now that capitals have taken on a meaning of like you're yelling at someone. Exactly. They're hostile. So a little lower case, okay, and that AY just adds a little extra like hug on to the end of it. I like it. All right. I'll consider it. What I want to know is how many people are going to write in about your entomology joke. Oh, okay. I don't know.

A few probably. A few far less now though. Someone just stopped typing there. Alright. Well since Chuck just referenced somebody stopped typing, obviously short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are where every listen to your favorite shows.