{"id":17794,"date":"2019-09-03T01:40:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T01:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=17794"},"modified":"2019-09-04T04:21:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T04:21:12","slug":"curious-kids-why-do-we-say-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/curious-kids-why-do-we-say-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"Curious Kids: Why do we say ‘OK’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elly van Gelderen<\/a>, Arizona State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Curious Kids<\/a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Why do we say \u2018OK\u2019?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Of all the words in the English language, the word \u201cOK\u201d is pretty new: It\u2019s only been used for about 180 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s become the most spoken word on the planet<\/a>, it\u2019s kind of a strange word. Sometimes it\u2019s spelled out \u2013 \u201cokay\u201d \u2013 and sometimes just two letters are used: \u201cOK.\u201d Other times, periods separate the two letters: \u201cO.K.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a syntactician<\/a>, which means that I\u2019m someone who looks at the structure of language. I also study words and how they change over time.<\/p>\n

For example, the word \u201csilly\u201d used to mean \u201chappy\u201d and now means \u201cfoolish.\u201d Sometimes new words develop, like \u201cstan<\/a>,\u201d which means a person who\u2019s obsessed with a celebrity, and \u201cexomoon<\/a>,\u201d a moon outside our solar system.<\/p>\n

Linguists \u2013 the term for people who study languages \u2013 don\u2019t always know why these shifts happen. Usually they\u2019re in response to social changes or scientific discoveries. But the largest dictionary of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, is always adding new words. In fact, it added 1,400 new words in June 2019<\/a> and will add even more words two more times this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK,\u201d whose earliest usage is 1839, according to the Oxford English Dictionary<\/a>, generally means things are good or alright.<\/p>\n

So why did people start to say \u201cOK\u201d?<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t entirely sure. But some linguists point to how, in the early 19th century, humorous abbreviations<\/a> were in vogue. Young people would write things like \u201cKG,\u201d which stood for \u201cknow go,\u201d an intentional misspelling of \u201cno go,\u201d when they meant something was impossible. It was a way to play with language.<\/p>\n

Likewise, experts think \u201cOK\u201d likely emerged as an abbreviation of \u201coll korrect<\/a>\u201d \u2013 which was a jokey way of saying \u201call correct.\u201d Others say that it derives from \u201cOld Kinderhook<\/a>,\u201d a nickname for former U.S. President Martin Van Buren, or that it comes from Choctaw<\/a>, a Native American language.<\/p>\n

The nice thing about \u201cOK\u201d is that it\u2019s so versatile. It can be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, a conjunction or an interjection. It\u2019s also competed, over time, with \u201calright<\/a>\u201d and \u201call right\u201d \u2013 words and phrases that have identical meanings.<\/p>\n

One last important thing to know: If you like to play Scrabble, it\u2019s alright \u2013 and even OK \u2013 to use \u201cOK\u201d when playing. Just within the past year, it became an accepted word<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. We won\u2019t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.<\/em>\"The<\/p>\n

Elly van Gelderen<\/a>, Professor of English, Arizona State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Why do we say \u2018OK\u2019? Of all the words in the English language, the word \u201cOK\u201d is pretty new: It\u2019s only been used for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":17790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[6689,6786,6884,1164,191,149,2755,6883,3171],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17794"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17796,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17794\/revisions\/17796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}