Do You Really Know What 'OK' Means? 99.9% People Have No Idea!
Most of us assume that 'OK' is simply short for "okay". Despite its simplicity, the full form of OK is unknown to the vast majority of people. According to several informal surveys floating around social media, 99.9 percent of people do not know what OK actually stands for. And while the phrase feels modern, its roots go back nearly two centuries. (News18 Hindi)
The word gained further popularity in the 1840 US presidential election, when supporters of Martin Van Buren used the slogan "Vote for OK". Van Buren, who hailed from Kinderhook, New York, was affectionately nicknamed "Old Kinderhook". The abbreviation OK suddenly served a dual purpose - referring both to his nickname and the previously coined "Oll Korrect". The slogan went viral by 19th-century standards, and the term OK started gaining national, and eventually global, traction. (Source: YouTube)
Other commonly used abbreviations have undergone similar transformations. 'ie' comes from the Latin 'id est,' meaning 'that is.' 'eg' stands for 'exempli gratia,' which means 'for example". (News18 Hindi)
The word 'PIN,' used for debit and credit card security, stands for 'Personal Identification Number". (News18 Hindi)
Even SCUBA, now used as a word on its own, actually expands to "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus". (News18 Hindi)
And then there's AM and PM, used to divide the day into hours - AM stands for "ante meridiem", or before noon, while PM means "post meridiem", after noon. (News18 Hindi)
Some even trace OK back to Greek origins, suggesting it may be derived from "Olla Kalla", which roughly translates to "all good". Though this theory has less scholarly support, it continues to circulate as part of the word's lore. What makes OK fascinating is that it's an abbreviation that lost its capital letters over time. It became so embedded in everyday language that people stopped treating it as a short form of anything. In that sense, OK is not just a word; it's linguistic history hiding in plain sight. (News18 Hindi)
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Time of India
5 hours ago
- Time of India
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Scroll.in
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Hindustan Times
8 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
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