where did the expression O.K. come from?
446304
I found this on line,\n\n"Devious Derivations: Popular Misconceptions -- and More than 1,000 True Origins of Common Words and Phrases" by Hugh Rawson (toExcel, Iuniverse.com, 1994, 2000). This reference has some new information on the origins listed here (new information in parenthesis), new origins and what could be the actual origin. \n\n: : 1. Orrin Kendall biscuits, which soldiers ate during the Civil War. \n: : 2. Short for Aux Cayes, a Haitian port that American sailors praised for its rum. \n: : 3. Old Keokuk, a Native American tribal chief who was said to have signed treaties with his initials. \n: : 4. OK stands for "all correct" or the illiterate phrase "Orl Korrect." \n: : 5. U.S. President Martin Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" -- OK for short. He was a native of Kinderhook, N.Y.\n: : 6. Choctaw word "okeh," (or "hoke") meaning "indeed" (or "It is so.")\n: : 7. Scottish "auch aye", meaning "ah yes." (Or "och aye," meaning "okay.")\n: : 8. From the French maritime phrase "au quai" meaning "at dock", and therefore at last safe from the ravages of the open sea.\n: : 9. '0 killed' - the report of the night's death toll during the First World War. \n: : 10. All clear after the shoot-out at O.K. Corral. \n: : 11. Instruments calibrated at an Observatory at Kew had, affixed to them, a stamp, or impression, to authenticate that calibration. This stamp was O K - Observatory Kew. \n\n: : New origins from Mr. Rawson's book:\n: : 12. The abbreviation is for Oberst Kommandant, German for "Colonel in Command," used by either -- take your pick -- a General Schliessen or Baron von Steuben when initialing letters and orders during the American Revolution.\n: : 13. It comes from the name of a freight agent, Obadiah Kelly, whose initials were widely disseminated on bills of lading.\n: : 14. The abbreviation is for Open Key, popularized by telegraphers in the 1860s.\n: : 15. It comes from the names of Lords Onslow and Kilbracken, who initialed bills after they were read and approved in England's House of Lords. \n: : 16. From a misreading of "Order Recorded" on official documents.\n: : 17. Or from Finnish "oikea," correct.\n: : 18. From the Greek "olla," all, plus "Kalla," good.\n\n: : Professor Allen Walker Read of Columbia University, "finally unveiled its (O.K.'s) origins in a series of magisterial articles in 'American Speech' in 1963 and 1964.What Professor Read discovered was that the abbreviation arose in a humorous manner at a time when Americans were indulging in a great deal of wordplay, including abbreviations, acronyms, puns and intentional mispronunciations and misspellings. The earliest example of O.K. that he unearthed (and it is so far still the oldest known specimen) is from the Boston 'Morning Post' of March 23, 1839. It appears in connection with a note by the paper's editor, Charles Gordon Greene, about a visit to New York of some members of the local Anti-Bell-Ringing Society. (The A.B.R.S., as it was usually known, was itself something of a joke, having been formed the previous year to oppose -- its name to the contrary -- an ordinance of the Boston Common Council against ringing dinner bells.) In an aside, Mr. Greene suggested that if the Bostonians were to return home via Providence, they might be greeted by one of his rivals, the editor of that city's 'Journal,' who 'would have the 'contribution box,' et ceteras, o.k. -- all correct -- and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.'.Thus, it appears that O.K. was invented, possibly by Greene, as an abbreviation of the jocular 'Oll' or perhaps 'Orl korrect,' meaning "All right.' This explanation would seem farfetched, except for Read's finding that it dovetai
1144858
o_O what do you mean?
628875
O.K. - \nabbreviation of "oll korrect", alteration of "all correct" : all right. Mutilple emails (see contrib list) have indicated that the abreviation O.K. was not an english expression, they claim that the term came from the germans during the W W II, because the merchandise that they used in war was revised and stamp with a seal stating OLL KORRECT, so the abreviation for those words were O.K. \n\n\n:)\n\nhey your avatar is similar to mines! :)
1170816
This originated in the early 1980s. It is generally regarded as an American expression. This item from the New York newspaper the Syracuse Herald-American, Feb. 1982, which is the earliest version in print that I can find, puts that in some doubt. It's in a piece by Jerry Buck, writing out of Los Angeles, about actress Lauren Tewes
467168
This mainly British colloquial expression is recorded only from the 1960s, but is certainly older. Its origin is uncertain. Some argue it may be from cods, an old term for the testicles that derives from the Anglo-Saxon sense of cod, a bag. It is also suggested that wallop may be connected with the dialect term meaning to chatter or scold (not with the word meaning a heavy blow).\nOne explanation has it that it refers to the late Hiram Codd, who—despite his archetypally American first name—was British, born in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in 1838. He spent his life working in the soft drinks business. In the 1870s, he designed and patented a method of sealing a glass bottle by means of a ball in its neck, which the pressure of the gas in the fizzy drink forced against a rubber washer. Making the bottle was a technical challenge, since the ball necessarily had to be larger than the diameter of the neck. It was only in 1876, when he teamed up with a Yorkshire glass blower named Ben Rylands, that the answer was found. The Codd bottle was an immediate success; surviving examples are now highly collectable. You opened them by pushing the ball into the neck, and openers in the shape of short, thin cylinders were supplied for the purpose. One unexpected problem was that children smashed the bottles to use the glass balls as marbles.\nThe suggestion is that drinkers who preferred their tipple to have alcohol in it were dismissive of Mr Codd’s soft drinks. As beer was often called wallop, they referred sneeringly to the fizzy drink as Codd’s wallop, and the resulting word later spread its meaning to refer to anything considered to be rubbish.\nThis story reeks of the approach to word history called folk etymology. As one writer has put it, it seems rather too neat an explanation to be true. But nobody’s come up with anything better.
555893
It's slang from the UK & Ireland, a made up phrase to avoid cursing when surprised or annoyed.\n\nIt's also a slang term for a sexual position.
1048794
[Q] From Mike Willis: “I’m trying to find out the origin of the phrase, on the QT, meaning off the record or in confidence.”\n\n[A] According to Robert Hendrickson, in The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, the first reference is from a British ballad of 1870, which contained the line “Whatever I tell you is on the QT”. It seems to have been just an abbreviated spelling, using the first and last letters of the word quiet, the mild obfuscation also suggesting a meaning for the expression. The Oxford English Dictionary has a first sighting from 1884: “It will be possible to have one spree on the strict q.t.”. Mr Hendrickson points out that it also occurs in a famous London ditty of 1891, sung by Lottie Collins, which also introduced the famous chorus line “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”:\n\n    A sweet Tuxedo girl you see,\n    Queen of swell society,\n    Fond of fun as fun can be,\n    When it's on the strict Q.T.
44504
there are two supposed origins - \n1. is from the word nut, meaning hard seed, which is called "hnutu" in Old English or "*khnut" in Proto-Germanic\n\n2. from earlier be nutts upon "be very fond of" (1785), which is possibly from nuts (noun, plural) "any source of pleasure" (1617), from nut (described above). Sense influenced probably by metaphoric application of nut to "head" (1846, e.g. to be off one's nut "be insane," 1860). Nut "crazy person, crank" is attested from 1903, (British form nutter first attested 1958).
1058993
Actually, the reference originally came from a song that was popular in 1956.  It was by the Jayhawks and called Stranded In The Jungle.  It managed to climb the Billboard charts to #18.\n\nThe story is about a guy who gets stranded in a jungle and all he wants to do is get back to his girl in the states.  He gets knocked out, wakes up in a big pot and smells something cooking then realizes he's about to be the main course for a tribe of cannibals.  The next line is "Great googly moogly let me out of here! " \n\nOf course the expression has been used in numerous other songs since but now you know the complete story goes back half a century.
873765
It actually came from the war it was a code that meant zero killed... \nSimply amazing isnt it..\nwho would ever guessed that that abbreviation would come into  every day conversation..
835594
According to Wikipedia, origins of this saying are unknown.......
741742
I think it's a euphemism for "jacksh-t"\nSo now the question is, where did THAT phrase come from?
301635
I do. What was the phrase?
785422
It's probably from Aesop's Fables. That's where most quotes like that come from.
482731
The application of the word to human intercourse dates at least as far back as Proto-Germanic times, about 2500 years ago.  The form was *fukan "to have intercourse".  It was not vulgar originally.  Indeed, it started life as a euphemism for another word (perhaps lost in time).  The original meaning in Proto-Indo-European (about 6000 years ago) of *pug- was "to strike" (*pug- is the ancestor word for *fukan).
770710
The acronym story is a complete fabrication from the middle of the 20th century.  It is completely false.\n\nThe word is the English cognate of the Proto-Germanic word *fukan 'have intercourse' which has its ultimate origin in Proto-Indo-European *pug- 'to strike' (compare English pugilist from Latin).  The English word f*ck derived according to regular sound laws from the Proto-Germanic form and there are cognate forms in most of the other Germanic languages.  It has moved in and out of vulgarity during its long reign in the Germanic languages.  In some time periods it was simply the normal term for breeding animals.  In Modern English it is moving out of being considered quite so vulgar since it is used so commonly.
45644
The history (if not the spelling!) of the term OK is largely debated. Some claim its derivation from the Chocktaw affirmative okeh, the Greek ola kalla, the Latin hoc ille -- all historically verifiable usages -- amongst others. It is argued that the cause of the success of the term in the US (regardless of its origin) is due to a fad of using initialisms during the 1830s and '40s. This fad of initialisms (eg: "TGIF", "FYI", "DIY") even went so far as generating letter combinations of intentional misspellings; popular ones were: "K.G.," for "know go," "K.Y.," for "know yuse," and "O.W.," for "oll write". "O.K." naturally followed, standing for "oll korrect". "O.K." is the only one that survived through the years, thanks perhaps to the precedence of the aforementioned affirmatives, but more certainly to the sloganeering during the presidential election campaign of Martin Van Buren. Born in Kinderhook, New York, Van Buren was nicknamed "Old Kinderhook" -- echoing the "oll korrect" initialism -- early in his political career. "O.K." became the rallying cry of the Old Kinderhook Club, a political organization supporting Van Buren during the 1840 campaign. H. L. Mencken would later describe term as "the most shining and sucessful Americanism ever invented."