At this time the Morning Post was less than a decade old, having been founded in 1831 by William Beals and Charles Gordon Greene. It was already the city’s leading newspaper, as it would remain for the next century. And because Greene was the editor in 1839, known for his wit and his bantering with other newspapers, it is almost certain that Greene himself was the father of o. k.
If anyone else had invented o. k., it might well have been stillborn. In that first appearance, there wasn’t much to recommend it or foresee its future greatness. But Greene evidently liked his egregiously incorrect “all correct.” He probably was responsible also for the next instance of o. k., published three days later in the Post. It was purportedly a letter from Providence, dated on the same day as the original o. k. in the Post, claiming that A.B.R.S. members did in fact visit Providence, unbeknownst to the editor of the Journal. The letter displays the penchant for abbreviation that favored the birth of o. k. It begins with an allusion to the March 23 report in the Post :
PROVIDENCE, MARCH 23, 1839
To the Editor of the Post. —The Editor of the Providence Journal, on Friday, denied that a delegation from the Boston A.B.R.S. went to New York on Thursday; but Saturday’s paper acknowledges, on the authority of a person whose “information is beyond all question,” that they were here and took their departure as per Post.
Many of O.F.M. [Our First Men] and several futcheons [meaning unknown] had the pleasure of taking these “interesting strangers” by the hand, and wishing them a speedy passage to the Commercial Emporium. They were o. k. Where was the editor of the Journal? Is his paper the “organ” of the A.B.R.S.? Will he be informed of the precise time of their return, and have suitable preparations made for causing “the corks to fly, like sparks, upward”? Or will it be N.G. [no good]? …
So there it is, the second attested appearance of o. k., this time already assumed to be familiar enough to readers of the Post that it needed no translation or italics. Maybe Greene had second thoughts about its familiarity, however. On April 10, 1839, he used it again, this time in capitals and with a double explanation:
A new tie-up for Bostonians. —Mr. Michael Hughes, better known here by his well earned office of “Magnificent Punch Distiller for the A.B.R.S.” has opened a new hotel in New York, 6 Rosevelt street, near Pearl and Chatham, under the name of the “New England House.” It is hardly necessary to say to those who know Mr. Hughes, that his establishment will be found to be “A. No. One”—that is, O.K.—all correct.
This foreshadows the use of AOK more than a century later. OK hadn’t yet become a household term in 1839, but Greene continued to use it occasionally, and by October it had spread to another Boston newspaper, the Evening Transcript:
A Good Omen. So little excitement has been created here by the suspension of the U.S. Bank and its dependencies, that our Bank Directors have not thought it worth their while to call a meeting, even for consultation, on the subject. It is o. k. (all correct) in this quarter. [October 11]
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1839, OK made its way to New York. On September 2, the New York Evening Tattler gave New York a taste of OK:
Carlyle.—We are told by the Mirror that Carlyle, author of “Sartor Resartus,” is coming to America to lecture. Vell, vot ov it! He can’t help making money; for all foreigners do that, when they come to America, whether humbugs or not. Aye! and then go home and abuse us for our credulity. These “wise men from the East,” who came so far to enlighten our darkness, are right enough, of course, to play at bowls with us as long as we are willing to set ourselves up, like skittles, to be knocked down for their amusement and emolument. O K ! all correct!
Still in 1839, by November OK had spread to Philadelphia, in this report by the editor of the Philadelphia Gazette about the New York fad for abbreviations in his November 12 issue:
They have a curious, short-hand phraseology in Wall street which it is amusing to hear. A man offers another a note with the endorsement of a third,—and saying of it—“You see it’s A. i., the man is decidedly O.F.M.”
“Yes—that’s good—O.K.—I.S.B.D.” [it shall be done] …
This story, in turn, was reprinted in New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans within a month.
So it began, and once begun, there was no stopping OK. But how could it have begun? What motivated Charles Gordon Greene to “have the ‘contribution box,’ et ceteras, o. k. —all correct” in the first place?
It could only have happened because of the odd fad mentioned above. As Read explains, “Beginning in the summer of 1838, there developed in Boston a remarkable vogue of using abbreviations. It might well be called a craze.” Greene may be the one who started it all. Read gives this example from the Morning Post of June 12, 1838:
Melancholy —We understand that J. Eliot Brown, Esq., Secretary of the Boston Young Men’s Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Indians, F.H.H. (fell at Hoboken, N.J.) on Saturday last at 4 o’clock, p.m. in a duel W.O.O.O.F.C. (with one of our first citizens). What measures will be taken by the Society in consequence of this heart rending event, R.T.B.S. (remains to be seen).
Greene also used, varying between capital letters and small caps, N.G. (no go), S.P. (small potatoes), G.C. (gin cocktail), M.J. (mint julep), and G.T. (gone to Texas—to escape the jurisdiction of the United States).
These initialisms are not so different from those used in Internet chat today, like BTW (by the way), LOL (laughing out loud), and IMHO (in my humble opinion). Greene’s on-the-spot abbreviations, usually followed by needed elucidations, especially resemble more obscure present-day coinages like ANFAWFOS (and now for a word from our sponsor), TANSTAAFL (there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch), ROFLEW (rolling on floor laughing while eating waffles), or the sesquipedalian RAOTFLMMFAOIATKFLMM (rolling around on the floor laughing my motherf——ing ass off in an attempt to keep from losing my mind).
But the Boston wits of 1838 and 1839 took abbreviation one step further toward both humor and obscurity by mangling the spelling. OK was not the first to be misspelled. In 1838, for example, Greene had used O.W. for all right, just as wrong as OK was when it made its appearance. (Another Boston publication used the correct abbreviation a.r. in February 1839, but that was evidently too tame for Greene and the Morning Post.)
By mid-1839 the fad for misspellings as well as abbreviations had hit New York too, evoking this comment in the New York Evening Tattler for July 27:
THE INITIAL LANGUAGE.—This is a species of spoken shorthand, which is getting into very general use among loafers and gentlemen of the fancy, besides Editors, to whom it saves, by its comprehensive expressiveness, much trouble in writing and many “ems” in printing. The Boston Morning Post made great use of it at one period. It is known that the City of the Pilgrims is an extremely aristocratic place, and that “our first men” are referred to constantly. Charley Green of the Post always wrote O.F.M. Walter of the Boston Transcript, we believe, used to designate the Young Men’s Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Indians—Y.M.S.A.C.I. We heard yesterday of a lady who said to a gentleman, who was about to take leave of her, “O.K.K.B.W.P.” The gallant thought an instant and obligingly granted the fair one’s request. What could she have meant but “One Kind Kiss Before We Part?”
It will be observed that in the above, those initials are used which, in the vulgar spelling, begin the words they are intended to signify. But this language is more original, richer and less comprehensible, when those initials are given which might possibly, some how or other, be employed by people who spell “on their own hook.” For instance, “K.G.” (no go), K.Y. (no use) and K.K.K. (commit no nuisance). The last would be highly useful at this time to those housekeepers who throw filth into the streets. Apropos to this is the toast given by a country schoolmaster. “The Three Rs—Reading, ’Riting and ’Rithmetic.”
Internet communications nowadays do employ deliberate misspellings, but generally of whole words rather than initials: phishing (e-mail hoax fi
shing for personal and financial information), pwnd (owned, to be dominated), pron (porn), teh (misspelling of the; emphasizes next word). These have in common with OK the implication of insider knowledge, that those who use it deliberately share an understanding that others don’t. In the case of OK, it’s knowledge of the spelling of all correct.
Back in Boston in the late 1830s, the misspelling OW for all right was especially important in paving the way for a smooth launch and reception of OK. It’s not just that they both begin with A misspelled as O. They also have practically the same meaning. To this day, dictionaries generally give the definition as well as the chief synonym for OK as “all right.”
And all right itself was apparently an interesting newcomer in the 1830s. The earliest example of all right provided by the Oxford English Dictionary is from Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers of 1837: “‘Stand firm, Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking down. ‘All right, sir,’ replied Mr. Weller.”
3
1840 OLD KINDERHOOK IS OK
IN 1839, ITS FIRST YEAR, OK WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A joke. It was just one among many clever and not-so-clever abbreviations passed around by newspaper editors aiming to be funny. And as the next year began, there was nothing to suggest that OK was destined for greatness. Just the opposite; OK was poised to die out in obscurity, like OFM (our first men), SP (small potatoes), GC (gin cocktail), and OK’s fellow in misspelling, OW (all right), whenever the joke would get stale and bored editors would be ready to try other amusements.
For OK, then, the year 1840 began uneventfully, with just a jokey OK here and a jokey OK there. But then a funny thing happened: a presidential election. Thanks to the accident of an election with unparalleled popular participation, OK was drafted to serve in the campaign of 1840. And though the OK candidate lost, by the end of the year OK itself was a winner, indelibly impressed in the American psyche across the length and breadth of the Republic. Or perhaps more accurately, just running amok.
For OK wasn’t content to abide by a single meaning in 1840. Once the idea had been planted that OK could mean something in addition to “all correct,” politicians, editors, and would-be poets outdid each other in conjuring fanciful new meanings for the two letters. Where OK had been in danger of fading into obscurity at the start of 1840, by year’s end it was in danger of dissipating from meaning too many things to too many people. As luck would have it, it was saved from the latter fate only by a hoax about its origin—also involved with the election, and also in 1840.
Never before or since that year of 1840 has OK seen such radical change. Evolution, as Charles Darwin was to describe the process two decades later, is a good way to understand the development of OK in that memorable year. The bizarre politicking and editorializing of 1840 created an unusual temporary environment in which the fittest abbreviation to survive was none other than OK.
Old Kinderhook
The campaign of 1840 was a spectacular one, famous for its rallies, slogans, and symbols, in which OK played a prominent part.
The stage was set for OK in 1840 because it happened that Martin Van Buren was president of the United States and seeking a second term. And it happened that his home, where he was born and where he lived while not in Washington, was the upstate New York town of Kinderhook. Earlier in his political career Van Buren was known as the “Little Wizard” or “Little Magician” for his skill in building political coalitions (and for his short stature; he was five foot six). Now, noticing K in the name of his hometown, and noticing that Van Buren was advanced enough in age no longer to be called a young man (he was fifty-seven in 1840), someone in the Democratic Tammany political organization of New York City put that K together with the previous year’s OK, calling Van Buren “Old Kinderhook.” That nickname picked up the 1839 abbreviation like a magnet. OK now could have a double meaning: Old Kinderhook was all correct.
And Van Buren needed the power of OK, because he faced an opponent with some of the most effective campaign slogans of all time. The Whig candidate, old William Henry Harrison, campaigned on “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” Tippecanoe reminding voters of General Harrison’s victory over Indians at Indiana’s Tippecanoe River in 1811, and John Tyler being Harrison’s vice presidential candidate. But even more effective was the Harrison slogan “Log Cabin and Hard Cider.” Strangely enough, it came from a derisive invention by an anti-Harrison journalist, John de Ziska, in the Baltimore Republican of December 11, 1839:
Give him [Harrison] a barrel of hard cider, and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and my word for it, he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin by the side of a “sea coal” fire, and study moral philosophy.
After other Democrats picked up on this and repeated the intended insult, the Whigs decided to turn it around and make the most of it, portraying Harrison as a man of the people, supposedly living in a log cabin in Indiana with a barrel of hard cider outside. Harrison, in fact, lived in a grand Indiana mansion, but ever since the election of Andrew Jackson, Van Buren’s predecessor as president, an association with a log cabin was highly useful in demonstrating that a candidate was a man of the people. So popular was the image of “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” that it even was depicted on elegant tea sets.
The Tammany OK
The rough and ready Tammany Society of New York City was at the center of Democratic politicking, having supported Jackson for his two terms as well as the election in 1836 of Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Van Buren. On March 23, 1840, exactly a year after the birth of OK, a Tammany newspaper, the New Era, carried this announcement:
THE DEMOCRATIC O.K. CLUB, are hereby ordered to meet at the House of Jacob Colvin, 245 Grand Street, on Tuesday evening, 24th inst. at 7 o’clock.
Punctual attendance is requested.
By order,
WILLIAM STOKELY, President
John H. Low, Secretary
And what happened at that meeting? We can guess what they talked about from what came next. Like the other Tammany clubs in New York City—the Butt Enders, the Huge Paws, the Locofocos, the Simon Pures, the Tammany Temple, and oh yes, the Van Buren Association—the O.K. Club literally fought its Whig enemies. On March 27, the New Era used OK to tell its Tammany readers about a Whig meeting they ought to attend:
MEETING TO NIGHT O. K.
The British Whig papers of this city contain a call for a public meeting to be held this evening in Masonic hall.… Those “who would render the right of universal suffrage easy of exercise and convenient to all” are requested according to the call to be in attendance. To all such we say go.
And to that meeting they went, the O.K. Club in particular. According to the Newark Daily Advertiser, one of the many newspapers that next day reported the encounter:
The doors being closed, some 15 or 20 Whigs remained in conversation, when some 60 rowdies burst suddenly in upon them with personal violence—both parties tearing away banisters and benches for weapons. A posse of watchmen soon rushed in and arrested the ringleaders. The war cry of the locofocos was O.K., the two letters paraded at the head of an inflammatory article in the New Era of the morning. “Down with the whigs, boys, O.K.” was the shout of these poor, deluded men. Such were the fearful beginnings of the French Revolution!
Not to be outdone, the Whigs responded with a twist on O.K. The Daily Express commented a few days later,
“O.K.”—Many are puzzled to know the definition of these mysterious letters. It is Arabic, reads backwards, and means kicked out —of Masonic Hall. Vide Loco Foco Dictionary.
In turn, the Democratic New Era quickly picked up on K.O.:
K.O.—O.K.—The Ohio City Transcript (federal) is K.O. (kicked over) and defunct—which is held to be O.K. (oll korrect).
O.K. figured in a Democratic parade on April 10. According to the New Era the next day, marchers carried a banner showing
a huge Cabbage mounted upon legs, singing out O.K. to General Harrison, and chasing him like a racer.
At that poin
t, the Tammany adoption of O.K. was something of a mystery. Why would a political club adopt a misspelled abbreviation for “all correct” as its war cry? On May 27 the New Era provided the explanation:
JACKSON BREAST PIN. —We acknowledge the receipt of a very pretty gold Pin, representing the “old white hat with a crape” such as is worn by the hero of New Orleans, and having upon it the (to the “Whigs”) very frightful letters O.K., significant of the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, old Kinderhook, as also the rallying word of the Democracy of the late election, “all correct.” It can be purchased at Mr. P. L. Fierty’s, 486 Pearl Street. Those who wear them should bear in mind that it will require their most strenuous exertions between this and autumn, to make all things O.K.
Oll Krazy for OK
Though the Democrats tried to keep O.K. for themselves, the Whigs made use of it too, sometimes in reporting election successes (as in “Cleveland O.K.!!”), sometimes in mockingly reinterpreting the initials, as in this from the Whig Daily Express:
O.K., i.e. “Ole Korrect,” Out of “Kash,” Out of “Kredit,” Out of “Karacter,” and Out of “Klothes.”
It wasn’t just in New York either, though New York’s Tammany is where the political OK began. But the campaign brought OK far afield from the eastern cities. A history of Ohio tells of a memorable day in Champaign County of west-central Ohio, population 16,720 in 1840:
Urbana was early somewhat famed for its political conventions. The largest probably ever held in the county was September 15, 1840, in the Harrison campaign, when an immense multitude assembled from counties all around. A cavalcade miles in extent met General Harrison and escorted him from the west to the Public Square, where he was introduced to the people by Moses B. Corwin and made a speech two hours in length. He was at this time sixty-seven years of age, but his delivery was clear and distinct. Dinner was had in the grove of Mr. John A. Ward, father of the sculptor, in the southwest part of the town, where twelve tables, each over 300 feet long, had been erected and laden with provisions. Oxen and sheep were barbecued, and an abundance of cider supplied the drink for the day. In the evening addresses were made by Arthur Elliott, ex-Governor Metcalf, of Kentucky, who wore a buckskin hunting shirt, Mr. Chambers, from Louisiana, and Richard Douglass, of Chillicothe. The day was one of great hilarity and excitement. The delegations and processions had every conceivable mode of conveyance and carried flags and emblems with various strange mottoes and devices. Among them was a banner or board, on which was this sentence:
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