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From: steiny@idsvax.UUCP (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.nlang.africa
Subject: Re: Re: Derivation of O.K.
Message-ID: <168@idsvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Jun-85 11:57:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: idsvax.168
Posted: Sun Jun 16 11:57:39 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Jun-85 15:16:24 EDT
References: <280@mhuxj.UUCP> <1672@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: Independent Consultant - C/UNIX, Natural Language
Lines: 35
Xref: utcs net.nlang:3154 net.nlang.africa:57

>
> In article <280@mhuxj.UUCP> daa@mhuxj.UUCP (ANSEN) writes:
> >I just read that the word "Okay" stems from the
> >Wolof word "wawkay", which means "by all means",
> >or "certainly."  The word was brought into American
> >English by slaves brought over from West Africa.
> >Does anybody know more about this?  Does anybody
> >know of any other possible sources of the use
> >of "O.K." in English?
> >
> >Debra Ansen
> >inhp4!mhuxj!daa
> 
> Completely false, just as all the other explanations of "OK" coming
> from some foriegn place.  It is an authentic American invention,
> from a kind of ``cutesy'' slang popular in the 1920's.  (I would quote
> you my Steward Berg Flexner books right now but I can't find them).
> -- 
> Gordon A. Moffett               ...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,sun}!amdahl!gam

	From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

	"O.K., OK, Okay" - Probably popularized by a slogan of the
O.K. club, the Democratic party's political club of 1840; for 
*Old Kinderhook*, the nickname of president Martin Van Buren,
who was born in *Kinderhook*, New York; but previously attested
to in the 1830's as a modish slang abbreviation of favorable
but uncertain meaning, possibly connected with another such
abbreviation, *DK*, for "don't know."


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Don Steiny - Computational Linguistics
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