O. K.', But What Do We Know about It

T EUER abbreviations have been accepted as a part of the American L scene for a long time. The modern ones, such as AF A. A. for Agricultural Adjustment Administration, K. O. for Knockout, and D. V. O. T. for Dog Vomit on Toast, once heard among pre-war Americans in Oxford University, summarizing their disrespect for British food, are merely in line with a tradition long established. For instance, P. G. for Public Gaol turns up in 1y48 in a Virginia document; F. m. c. for Free man of color had a cuirency from 1840 to the end of the Civil War; A. for Adulteress, now obsolescent, had a brisk vogue during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; F. F. V. for First Families of Virginia has been used from 1847 to the present day; and 1V. G. for No Go, or No Good, has been common since 1840. But 0. K. is king of all American abbreviations. It is uttered probably one billion times a day in the United States, more or less, and is undoubtedly the most popular of all abbreviations. Yet it is not known for certain what the two letters stand for, or why the expression ever arose. Interest in its origin has aroused speculation and hard work by many a common man and historian; and theories about it have been about as plentiful as sunshine in New Mexico. I have been bitten by the 0. K. bug, and have spent long hours and effort in running down various clues. I suspect I have taken more pains with the records involved in this problem than any other afflicted person. I have worked with all the material collected for the Dictionary of American EnglisZ;-I have contributed several items to its files, checked, in photographs or in original manuscripts, all the relevant documents, and brought the whole effort to a focus by editing the 0. K. entries in the dictionary. This may not qualify me to appear before a Congressional committee on national defense? but it has given me courage to clear the ground of some false notions of the origin of 0. K. Mr. Mencken, in his admirable book, The American Language (pp. 206-207), lists ten theories of 0. K.'s origin. At least nine of these theories are pure guesses without any supporting evidence, and Mr. Mencken 1S justified in tossing them back at their authors with a few terse comments. For instance, some one thinks that Aux Cayes, the name of a West Indian rum allegedly drunk by Americans in large quantities during the eighteenth

Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Speculation · Suspect · Lexicography and Language Studies · Classics · History · Law

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