User talk:Jnestorius/Okay

Omitted sections

Oll korrect

A problem with this etymology is the implication that common usage was driven by the written appearance of a geographically and socially isolated slang term that was alien to the rest of the country. While appearing in written form often spreads and expands the usage of colloquial terms, it is rare for a single instance of written speech to make a term colloquial. The relatively slow take-up of the term by other English-speaking countries illustrates this pattern.

Another problem with this etymology is that the "comical misspellings" were phonetic. "Oll Korrect" (sometimes "orl korrect") clearly suggests that what is being comically misspelled was heard from someone speaking with a non-standard accent, either deliberately or habitually. The semantic similarity between "oll korrect" and the German (Pennsylvanian Dutch) "alles in Ordnung" ("everything is in order/all is correct") should be noted. However, at that time this accent was not widespread in America outside the north-east, which would have tended to reduce the rate of wider adoption of the now-arbitrary slang.

Choctaw

The emergence of the expression "OK" coincided with a seminal period in the development of American popular culture.

The War of 1812 and the appearance on the American scene of the frontiersman — both in the flesh and as a national symbol — mark the beginning of an indigenous psyche Americana which is strikingly reflected in the flood of Americanisms originating in the nineteenth century.

The lingua franca across much of this frontier was a pidgin version of Choctaw, often referred to as Mobilian trade language. The 1809 report of the Lewis and Clark Expedition stated flatly that Mobilian was "spoken by all the Indians from the east side of the Mississippi."

It was as if the assumption was that the reader needed no explanation about how to use the expression.

The Choctaw language and culture did indeed play a disproportionately significant part in trade, military, and religious affairs across the young country south of the Ohio River. An 1836 scholarly paper explained that the structures, modes, and inflexions of Choctaw made it easiest to use in some form by Europeans, and it therefore became for them "a general medium of intercourse with all the other adjacent Indian tribes." The study was largely based on an 1825 spelling book which used the particle -oke to end over a quarter of the sentences, but never included it any any word lists or discussions. The translated sentences did include a use of the interjection sia hoke, a variant of the si hoka that is part of the apocryphal stories about Choctaw use of the expression to Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

Although the details of these apocryphal stories might be questionable, it is virtually inconceivable that Jackson could interact with Choctaws for years, adopt a Choctaw boy and yet not use the "okeh" or "oke" expression. Andrew Jackson and his Tennessee Volunteers certainly heard the word frequently from the Choctaws while fighting side by side with them in the Pensacola Campaign of the War of 1812. There are at least two recorded conversations between Jackson and the Choctaw Chief Pushmataha in which Pushmataha uses the Choctaw word in speaking to Jackson. It is plausible that Jackson learned the expression from the Choctaws, and then introduced it to Washington D.C. when he became President.

It might be noted that practice of referring to the expression with the assumption the reader needs no explanation of it is common in the usage of "okay." An 1840 ad for a Jackson Breast Pin with the "frightful letters O.K." celebrating "the hero of New Orleans" did not bother to explain relationship between "O.K." and the Battle of New Orleans.

Press coverage of the "O.K. Boys" apparently did not include any explanation of source of their name.

The Arrow shirt company marketed an Okeh collar for a while with the slogan "all that its name implies." The advertisers felt no need to explain to the public what it was the name implied.

It also discusses various uses of oke or ok ! used as an interjection "to excite the attention of the party addressed": This interjection is also used with a variety of intonations to express other emotions as well, from joy to lamentation, just as in English, where, depending on the tone of voice, "okay" might be used to express anything from joyful exuberance to grim capitulation and defeat.

In 1877 the Congrès International des Americanistes in Luxembourg offered presentations in German about the Chakta-Indianer expression okeh and in French about Le Chacta particule Okeh. By 1879 "ok eh?" was being used as an interjection in Dutch popular literature.

The Grammar was reprinted the next year by the American Philosophical Society, and the Choctaw etymology endorsed by historians in scholarly journals.

The publication in 1915 of A dictionary of the Choctaw language renewed interest in Choctaw loan words. Woodrow Wilson was a highly respected historian and author of, among other works, the five volume A History of the American People before he became President. He always used that Choctaw "okeh" in place of "O.K." and referred people who questioned his practice to standard dictionaries of the day which cited the Choctaw etymology from the 1870 Grammar.

Wilson's "pedantic" use of "okeh" has been derided but it was The expression was used in various federal and state records. A 1930 volume of Proceedings of Michigan Natural Resources Commission apparently used "Okeh" to okay items of business.

Another explicit use the the Choctaw etymology dealt with the British condiment, Mason's OK sauce. In 1885 George Mason & Co. was specializing in beef broths and lozenges for invalids. In 1911 they added "O.K. sauce" to their line. They promoted it based on "the Choctaw Oke or Hoke, meaning it is so." The "O.K." name became such a hit that by 1929 they were also advertising "O.K." Pickles," and "O.K." Chutney. "Oke" was a popular spelling for the expression in England and brought back to America where, since it was presumedly pronounced with a "long e" sound, it gave rise to the expression "okie doke."

Much of the time the "okeh" or "oke" spelling was used, as might be expected, in colloquial contexts. But not all the uses were folksy or colloquial by any means. They were used in such respected mainstream or literary publications as Popular Science, The American Mercury, Scribner's magazine, the Catholic Digest, and The Rotarian.

By the 1960's the Choctaw etymology was routinely cited in dictionaries — in over two dozen editions of Merriam-Webster alone, for example — and endorsed by nationally prominent scholars. The expression was occasionally used explicitly and intentionally as a Choctaw or at least Native loan word.

It might be assumed the early Choctaw publications were based on an appreciation for the Choctaw language or culture. Quite the contrary, the purpose of them was to remove that language and culture from American society or, as the editor put it in his introduction to the 1870 Grammar, extinguishing the Choctaws' "evil habits" and "redeeming the nation from drunkenness, ignorance and immorality to sobriety, godliness, and civilization." And ever since, a similar disdain or antipathy when "some wounded scholar raises a plaintive cry in favor of okeh" has set the tone for much of the discussion.

Nevertheless, modern use of the expression validates observations repeatedly made since 1836. English use of the expression employs the same phonology and semantics as the Choctaw, and the syntax and inflections are often very atypical of English but very typical of Choctaw particles and interjections.

Despite efforts to exclude the Choctaw etymology from any discussion, the Choctaw expression "okeh" is still occasionally used, sometimes in rather unexpected contexts The "O.K. sauce" bottle mystique is alive and well on the Internet; a Google search of "Masons OK sauce" yields over 50,000 ebay hits. And there are hundreds of options for downloading lyrics, soundtracks, videos, tweets, ringtones, etc. of

Wolof

"Waw" means "yes" and the suffix "-kay" or "-kai" adds emphasis. A simplistic word-for-word translation of Wolof's "wawkay" is "yes [emphatically]" or "yes, indeed"; but better usage translations would be "I agree", "I'll comply", "that's good", "that's right", or "all correct". The consonance of this last translation with the first documented usage of okay could be significant, or could be coincidence. However, okay's colloquial rather than formal usage strongly coincides with other Wolof words which have migrated documentedly into the American version of the English language, and its earliest documented usage is explicitly colloquial, not to say jocular. Significantly, the emergence of okay in white Americans' vocabulary dates from a period when many refugees from Southern slavery were arriving in the North of America, where the word was first documented. Many refugees from Southern slavery were arriving in the North of America at the time of okay's first written appearance and it is likely that Boston residents would have come in contact with Africans using Wolof terms and could well have had wawkay translated for them as "all correct".

A strength of this etymology is its consonance with Read's own documented evidence of the craze for "comical misspellings". These typically took the form of phonetic transcriptions of locally heard accents. For example, the German-accented (Pennsylvanian Dutch-accented) "Vell, vot ov it?"

Also: "independent evidence of the importance of Wolof as a lingua franca among American slaves"

Documented instances exist well before 1839 of African slaves in the Americas being quoted phonetically using words strikingly similar to the now common usage and meaning of okay. For example, in 1784:

Being incensed in the highest degree, I threatened him with severe punishment, when he begged me to listen to his excuse,

'Kay massa (says he), you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into de canoe; here he be, massa, fine fish, massa ; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake till you come [...]'

Variants

[k or kk] Commonly attributed to have originated from actor/writer Sean Neil Connell.||

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