
How 'OK' took over the world (2011) - mercer
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12503686
======
spodek
> _OK allows us to view a situation in simplest terms, just OK or not._

I disagree. I find that OK implies some consent or agreement.

In Chinese there's a word I don't know how to write but sounds something like
"uh" that means more "I acknowledge" without implying agreement. Actually, I
don't know if it's a word, but I hear it a lot.

Whether it exists in Chinese or not, I wish English had a word more neutral
than OK or uh-huh. "I acknowledge what you said" is too clunky.

~~~
PKop
From military lingo:

"Roger" meaning "Received and understood"... exactly what you're looking for
"I acknowledge what you said". Sometimes used as "Roger that"

I learned this in the army and still use often in conversation or text.

~~~
muraiki
I worked a job where I would use roger in this sense. After I put in my 2
week's notice, a coworker told me that this actually annoyed my boss to no
end. We used IRC extensively for communications, so I wrote an IRC bot that
would reply "roger" to everything he said (along with some other sayings that
annoyed him) and cron'd it to run a week after I had left.*

* The rest of the story is that I wrote two bots to say different things, but forgot that they'd trigger "roger" off of each other, so the end result is that I had two bots constantly spamming the channel with "roger". I guess I should have written tests!

~~~
dctoedt
IIRC, "Roger" came about in the early days of voice-radio communication as the
old-style phonetic alphabet version of "R" _(in the modern phonetic alphabet,
"R" would be "Romeo")_ ; the single letter R was a "prosign" abbreviation used
in Morse-code telegraphy (as • — • or dot-dash-dot) to indicate "received and
understood." [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations)

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sciolizer
The Boston Morning Post theory is well supported, but so are a few other
alternative theories.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK#Proposed_etymologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK#Proposed_etymologies)

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hamandcheese
I much prefer and almost always write "okay" vs "ok", and I feel like most of
my friends do the same. I wonder if it's a generational thing. I and most of
my friends are early-mid 20s.

~~~
extr
I agree and am in a similar demo. I think I just as often use "kk" but I'm not
able to place exactly where I picked this up from or what it's origins are.
UrbanDictionary claims it's internet slang for "okay, cool" == "k, kool" ==
"kk" which seems believable. It actually hadn't struck me until writing this
comment that "kk" was internet specific slang, and thinking about it it's
something I don't really see from most people.

~~~
lucb1e
Sidenote: kk is what teens here use a lot to swear with cancer (which is
spelled with two 'k's instead of 'c's in Dutch). For some reason many people
take big offense, but other illnesses are perfectly fine to them. I've heard
people take such offense over what was meant to sound affirmative. I always
cringe at the potential reactions when seeing kk somewhere.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Also dutch, and while kk can mean kanker (cancer) in chats its often used as
just 'ok ok'.

Though I did have an awkward incident once where someone thought 'kk' meant
cancer and they got very upset.

~~~
pavement
Within a certain age bracket, many American girls who prefer to be perceived
as cute and girly, simply type the letters " _kk_ " to exude a sense of
affable agreeableness. This is often paired with " _oo_ " to present surprise
or acquired understanding.

I get the sense that American girls are doing it both to promote a youthful
personality, and because a double-tap of the same letter is efficient,
reducing effort while typing. It's also used by older women adopting a cutsey
voice or tone, especially women raising teenage daughters, sometimes as a mock
teeny bopper act.

Males almost never ever use this regardless of age, unless engaging in
feminine play as parody, and it gets dropped among females cognizant of their
perception as adult women retaining possession of responsibilities and
authority.

Probably, among all non-users, " _kk_ " is dropped in fearful avoidance of the
dreaded accidental " _kkk_ " in an unnacceptable context.

Among all, a curt use of " _k_ " with a cessation of further conversation is
sometimes an expression of annoyance, either because the conversation took a
turn they didn't like, or because they're busy or being interrupted somehow.

Capital " _K_ " in this sort of context, combined with habitually minimized
capitalization and little or no grammatical punctuation as a personality
trait, is almost always an expression of sulking, pouting or open anger with
consequences pending. Capital " _K_ " after receiving bad news is as if to say
" _someone will pay for this, maybe you._ "

~~~
meowface
>Males almost never ever use this regardless of age, unless engaging in
feminine play as parody, and it gets dropped among females cognizant of their
perception as adult women retaining possession of responsibilities and
authority.

I'm a heterosexual male in my mid-20s and many in my gender and age bracket
say "kk" and "ooo" online as casual responses to things all the time -
including myself. I wasn't aware we were teenaged girls. I don't think either
word is inherently feminine, cutesy or immature; just very informal.

The thing I'd associate the most with younger American girls is frequent use
of ellipses, often (but not always) with 1-2 less or more dots than is
required. Like "k.." or "nice....". I think this is to some extent emulating
the "high rising terminal" vocal pattern commonly associated with American
women:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal#Implicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal#Implications_for_gender)

And of course emojis/emoticons.

~~~
pavement
My comment is to be taken as anecdotal evidence only. My personal experience.
Nothing more.

It's just what I've encountered as an American interacting with other
Americanized Americans in the United States, with whom I've had a direct face-
to-face relationship. Without any IRL interactions, I have absolutely no idea
who's on the other side of the internet, and don't claim to know anything
about anyone anywhere else.

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ngrilly
I read a paper a few years ago telling a different story about OK having
evolved from the abbreviation 0K for "zero killings", used during World War
II. Anyone heard about that?

~~~
bikamonki
I've read that too. Myth busted I guess.

------
kylehotchkiss
I'm learning hindi (slowly) and there it's "teek hai", which to me always
sounds like T-K, and always makes me want to laugh a little.

~~~
pritambaral
Technically, it's "theek hai", like in "eighth"; and not "teek hai" like in
"eight". Would it still sound close enough to "T-K" to sound funny to you?

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520794
I always liked

    
    
      OK>
    

as a prompt, e.g., on a bootloader.

~~~
AstralStorm
Modify it to say:

YAY>

We booted and are live!

~~~
Raf_
That's adorable.

~~~
cat199
I prefer the

YAR!

prompt.

------
drewmol
My experience both in US high school and college English classes was that
'okey/okay' is taught as a proper American English word, universally accepted
as synonymous with 'alright', 'OK' being a contraction/slang. Interesting to
read this may not be the case.

~~~
nkrisc
Interesting, I've _never_ seen it spelled 'okey' until now.

------
triangleman
Not at all used in Brazil from what I can tell. I told a fruit vendor after
tasting his wares "it's ok" and he though I said "shocking" which apparently
has a portuguese cognate.

Thankfully the thumbs up gesture is pretty pervasive there.

~~~
ribfeast
You'd say "ta bom"

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sharpercoder
I notice a trend in my environments where an acknowledgement went from "okee"
(Dutch) or "okay" to "OK"/"ok" to now just "k".

~~~
tomsmeding
My experience (Dutch-born student in NL) is that "k" sounds sort-of less
interested than "ok" or any longer variety, even in spoken Dutch ("k" is
actually a used word in my environment). It seems that "k" corresponds to
"fine"/"acknowledged" while things like "ok" or "oke" (yes my friends spell it
like that, probably being too lazy to type é) correspond to
"yes"/"agreed"/"acknowledged". I wrote "acknowledged" in both categories
because they both acknowledge something, and sometimes the meanings do get
muddled. :)

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dnh44
With it's roots in the age of the telegraph, it would appear that OK is a
distant predecessor to other abbreviations of convenience such as LOL.

------
lunchladydoris
The origin of the term has been embedded in my memory (right next to Ben
Stein's description of Voodoo Economics) since I first heard it in the 1987
Dudley Moore/Kirk Cameron father-son switcheroo classic Like Father Like Son.

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yakshaving_jgt
I was hoping this guy took over the world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obgnr9pc820](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obgnr9pc820)

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peterquest
I'm curious as to how it was adopted by countries for which English is not the
primary language. I remember being surprised when I heard Parisians using it
regularly in their speech.

~~~
restalis
For one, it's an easy pick for someone with a cosmopolitan spirit. Then
there's also a lot of gadgets or software that come with the untranslated "ok"
which serves as a pushing base for all but the most aware and opposed to the
adoption of foreign words.

~~~
iiv
>Then there's also a lot of gadgets or software that come with the
untranslated "ok"

The word has been used a long time before gadgets and software became common
here in Sweden. I would guess it comes from films and tv-programs.

~~~
cat199
Have heard somewhere else this was widely spread in WWII era or thereabouts
since it was good for radio communications and there were many USians around

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Kluny
It's used in Denmark, but "k" is pronounced "ko" (like co in co-working) here,
so they, especially older ones, say "oh-ko!"

~~~
KozmoNau7
"Oh-ko" makes the vowels long, but the vowels should be short, almost clipped.

In IPA notation "ko" would be /kʰɔ/, I think.

~~~
qguv
You're looking for brackets, not slashes, since you're giving a phonetic
discription, not a phonemic one.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Sheesh, totally outnerded :-)

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stolk
In French, "au quai" means "in the harbour."

Cargo in the harbour, is not lost at sea, or in transit.

Instead it is safe and sound, or O.K.

~~~
manarth
The "au quai" etymology isn't universally accepted, and isn't recognised by
the Academie Française, who don't concede its use.

Generally, people use "d'accord" (sometimes shortened to "d'ac") over "OK" in
French.

~~~
tripa
I can understand that the etymology is disputed, but what does the modern
French expression of agreement have to do with it?

For all I know, it's entirely possible a misunderstanding/reappropriation of a
foreign phrase could be it.

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zmix
I always thought it was the opposite of K.O.

