By Rachel Sauer
The Palm Beach Post
It’s possible the great secret of life is found between two letters: O and K.
OK, OK, OK, everything’s OK.
So innocuous as to be meaningless, or to mean absolutely everything.
There’s a reason for all this: “OK” officially entered the popular lexicon March 23, 1839. We know this thanks to lexicographer Allen Walker Read, who taught at Columbia University for more than 30 years and died in 2002. His legacy is unearthing the origins of OK and of our most dreadful swear word, the one that begins with F.
Disproving the notion that OK began with President Martin Van Buren and his “Old Kinderhook” nickname, Read found the first use of OK in the March 23, 1839, Boston Morning Post. Back then, it was considered cool for young, smart hipsters to intentionally misspell words, then abbreviate them – for example, KY for “know yuse” (no use) and OW for “oll wright” (all right).
And OK for “oll korrect” (all correct).
The Boston Morning Post slipped OK into its copy as part of a joke – possibly trying to lure younger readers? – and use of the word simply exploded. Politicians, including Old Kinderhook himself, adopted it. Everyone began saying it.
OK, OK, OK.
There are people on this planet who speak not a word of English, but they know OK. “OK, OK, OK,” followed by vigorous nodding, and maybe you’ll get to the airport on time.
OK is like the clearing of a throat or clearing of the air. Stick it at the start of a sentence and it means, “Here we go.”
OK is slightly less committal, slightly less enthusiastic than “yes.” Agree to something with an “OK” and it’s as good as shrugging and saying, “What the heck, I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Draw it out – Okaaaaaaaaayy – and it is skepticism and doubt in an efficient, two-letter package. Okaaaaaaayy is truncated code for “I have heard your idea, and I think it’s dumb, and we’re going to do things my way.”
OK is the response of people who fail to understand that “How are you?” isn’t so much a question as a greeting.
“How are you?”
“I’m OK.”
And you know that person wants a few follow-up questions. “I’m OK” means things could be worse, possibly, but they also could be much better. Conversely, you ask with a worried frown – “Are you OK?” – because it’s obvious the object of concern is not doing great. But as long as they’re OK, it means they’re probably not going to do anything drastic right away. OK buys everyone some time.
Plunge through the ’70s classic I’m OK, You’re OK, by Thomas A. Harris, past all the talk of Parent, Adult and Child, and discover this ultimate truth: OK is the great middle path.
To be OK is to be alive and mobile and in possession of the majority of your marbles. It is not grandiloquent happiness. It is not bliss or rapture or fundamental joy. Nor is it misery or abject despair. It is simply OK – the great, flat prairie of daily life, unmarred by extreme highs or lows. The majority of time exists between those two letters.
It is nothing. It is everything.
It is OK.