{"id":1246,"date":"2010-04-14T12:32:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T19:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2013-06-21T00:01:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:01:55","slug":"what-ok-stands-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/04\/what-ok-stands-for\/","title":{"rendered":"What \u201cOK\u201d Stands For"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> what “OK” stands for, namely “oll korrect”.\u00a0 So how does that make any sense at all?\u00a0 I’m glad\u00a0 you asked, because otherwise this article would have been way to short to publish. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

The time was 1839.\u00a0 In Boston and New York, slang abbreviations were all the rage with the abbreviations often representing deliberately misspelled slang phrases like “KY” for “know yuse”; “OW” for “oll wright” (the predecessor of “oll korrect”); “KG” for “know go”; “NS” for “nuff said”;\u00a0 and many many others.<\/p>\n

OK is one of the few of these abbreviations to survive.\u00a0 It managed to do so largely because of an 1840 New York campaign slogan by boosters of Martin Van Buren for re-election.\u00a0 Van Buren’s nickname was “Old Kinderhook”; so this group made their name the “O.K. Club”, thus having the double meaning of “oll korrect” and “Old Kinderhook”.\u00a0 As you might expect, this also gave rise to Van Buren’s opponents quipping that Van Buren’s supporters were all illiterate.<\/p>\n

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