Why Do We Say "OK"?👌

Morning Oll Friend!

OK let's get into this…

The word OK.

It’s short, it’s snappy.

It gets the point across.

You probably use it everyday and you don't even notice.

But what does OK actually mean?

And… where did it come from?

OK, so it's the 1830s, Boston:

There was this weird fad going around among the young “intellectual” types

People who look like this:

Basically they would intentionally misspell abbreviations as a sort of code that only they knew.

Things like:

Ya, KC.

Which Literally means “Knuff Ced” (Enough Said).

Or:

Meaning “Oll Wright” (Alright).

Or:

Meaning “Know Yuse” (No Use).

But one phrase was SOOO popular it rose above the rest.

OK.

Literally meaning “Oll Korrect” (All Correct).

It soon went from being a joke amongst nerds to being published in newspapers all across the United States:

But it was still kinda slangy. 

So, how did it start being used in normal language?

2 Words..

Which is this thing:

See, the telegraph was used to transmit very very short messages by using morse code.

Like this:

Which translates to:

See, they needed a way to express ‘message received’ in as short of a message as possible.

And you can't get much simpler than 2 letters.

So OK quickly became the go to response to let the other guy know that you received their message loud and clear. 

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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