Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, standing in for day Eve,
Speaker 1: and that makes this short stuff. Okay, m.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Dave Rus and HowStuffWorks dot com and grammarly
Speaker 2: for this, because we're talking about okay, which some people
Speaker 2: say is one of the most versatile and one of
Speaker 2: the greatest words in the English language.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't disagree.
Speaker 1: I don't either. I say, like more, but I think
Speaker 1: okay is probably second in my vocabulary.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Grammarly, we'll tell you that okay can be used in
Speaker 2: myriad ways and it's a very versatile word.
Speaker 3: It can be used as.
Speaker 2: An adjective, Oh that's okay, Yeah, that's just okay, like
Speaker 2: how was it okay?
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
Speaker 2: It can be an interjection okay, okay, let's talk, or
Speaker 2: someone's talking too much, okay, okay, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It can be used in the verb sense, like
Speaker 3: give me an example.
Speaker 1: That guy's really okaying that boat all over the lake.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's not that's not right, more like it's being
Speaker 3: okay as we.
Speaker 1: Speak, Oh good, yes, thank you, all right.
Speaker 3: Or it can be used in the noun sense you
Speaker 3: want to try that one.
Speaker 1: I'm having an Okay for breakfast.
Speaker 3: Nope, uh, we got the Okay, it's all good, yeh,
Speaker 3: I know, so boring.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, it's not boring. I'm just disgusting with myself.
Speaker 2: So very versatile word and the origin of okay. I
Speaker 2: don't even think we should go over all the kind
Speaker 2: of dumb ideas people have had, because we're pretty sure
Speaker 2: we know where it came from, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: See, so yeah, we know where it came from, almost
Speaker 1: certainly thanks to an etymologist named Alan Walker Reid, who
Speaker 1: at some point apparently put down his insects in his
Speaker 1: lab and started researching origins. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: Reid was working back in the nineteen sixties and he essentially,
Speaker 1: through really hardcore, old timey pre internet research, Yeah, traced
Speaker 1: back the origin of oka, the letter O and the
Speaker 1: letter K and the meaning of it as we understand it.
Speaker 1: And it's got one heck of a rump slap in
Speaker 1: origin if you ask me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also had a newsletter called Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 2: that ran for fifteen years, but he only put out
Speaker 2: four topics because it took him so long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took a while. But this is the sixties.
Speaker 3: Even that joke was not okay.
Speaker 1: It was okay, it was okay.
Speaker 2: So what he found out is the following in the
Speaker 2: early nineteenth century, when printing was sort of a new
Speaker 2: sort of not new, but it was cheaper to do
Speaker 2: than it had been previously, and there was an explosion
Speaker 2: of printing. Yeah, and one of the things that people
Speaker 2: started putting out were something on the penny press, like
Speaker 2: these sort of rags that were had a little bit
Speaker 2: of news to them, but also some opinion stuff, some jokes.
Speaker 3: This is what's trending.
Speaker 2: This is a little witty poem, you know, just little
Speaker 2: things like that. They've kind of likens it to the
Speaker 2: Internet of the eighteen thirties. And there was a lot
Speaker 2: of back and forth about this stuff through the editors
Speaker 2: of these penny papers. I guess they would they would
Speaker 2: sort of respond to one another through their own penny papers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they would trash talk one another, kind of like
Speaker 1: how our old stale rivalry with John Strickland, Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: kind of like that, right, uh huh. So there was
Speaker 1: that trash talking or that joking in joking back and
Speaker 1: forth between editors of these penny papers coincided with a
Speaker 1: trend that Reid called a cranes in starting in the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen thirty eight. That's how good this guy's
Speaker 1: research was. He pinned it down to that, starting in Boston,
Speaker 1: that people started using abbreviations for everything. It was like
Speaker 1: they thought that was so hilarious in eighteen thirties Boston.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is funny, like you think you might think
Speaker 2: now is so over abbreviated like this point in time,
Speaker 2: with texting in the Internet, with lols and I don't
Speaker 2: even know what half of them mean. I feel like
Speaker 2: and lo means lots of love, lots of love. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's what I thought. But the craze started back then.
Speaker 2: And here's just a few examples that Dave dug up,
Speaker 2: let me see, dl ec do let them come, or
Speaker 2: GTDHD give the devil a due, stuff.
Speaker 1: Like that, or WYG will you go?
Speaker 3: Oh? Will you go?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And so this started thanks to Charles Gordon Green,
Speaker 1: editor of Boston's Morning Post, back in eighteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: and by the following year, this initial language is what
Speaker 1: they called it. It spread from Boston all the way
Speaker 1: to New York and elsewhere. It was a jam. It
Speaker 1: was a craze and people were writing about it, people
Speaker 1: were using it. So you have part one of where
Speaker 1: Oka came from. You have an abbreviation craze that is
Speaker 1: being spreading like wildfire thanks to the penny papers that
Speaker 1: you can find in any major city in the US.
Speaker 2: Now that's right, and we're going to take a break
Speaker 2: and we'll tell you about another craze that also coincided
Speaker 2: that made okay okay right after this.
Speaker 3: Well, now we're.
Speaker 1: Driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
Speaker 1: two from Josh Pam Chuck. It's stuff you should.
Speaker 2: Know, all right, all right, So several things aligned here
Speaker 2: to make okay stick. We talked about the abbreviation craze,
Speaker 2: but no one is going around saying GTDHD give the
Speaker 2: devil his due. Most of these fell by the wayside
Speaker 2: over time. Okay did not because Okay also coincided with
Speaker 2: another weird trend, which was purposefully misspelling things. It was
Speaker 2: just funny, I guess. I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: like a bit where you were trying to appear like
Speaker 2: you were just a big dummy or what. But it
Speaker 2: became a thing where people would write, and especially in
Speaker 2: these these penny press papers, they would misspell things. They
Speaker 2: would write an opinion piece or like a letter, and
Speaker 2: it's things were purposely misspelled, and people thought it was hysterical. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so you got things like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you had abbreviations that were based on misspellings, like KG
Speaker 2: for no go, which would be obviously n O g
Speaker 2: O instead of k now go, but they would still
Speaker 2: say KG and people just rolled with laughter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no know stood in for no N a lot,
Speaker 1: so no go no use was actually ky. They spelled
Speaker 1: use with the y at the beginning.
Speaker 2: And you know what's funny is quite a few times
Speaker 2: over the years people have emailed us and done s
Speaker 2: Y S N by accident, and it's sort of kind
Speaker 2: of right aligned with this, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some people also do s U S k oh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen that too, which makes sense. Took me years
Speaker 1: to figure that one out. I always thought it was
Speaker 1: fat fingered or something. But as far as our episode
Speaker 1: is concerned, when OW came along, the origins of okay
Speaker 1: started to blossom. Now started to sprout from the ground
Speaker 1: like a seedling with just one leaf attached.
Speaker 2: That's right, because OW stood for all right, all being
Speaker 2: spelled ol l because and write being spelled w r
Speaker 2: ight because misspelling.
Speaker 1: Things was hysterical, hilarious.
Speaker 3: Right, So are you following those people? It's a little confusing, I.
Speaker 1: Think again, they thought this was witty and it was
Speaker 1: a huge trend. And finally, in eighteen thirty nine, March
Speaker 1: twenty first heads Off to Alan Walker read again for
Speaker 1: real pinpointed it. There was another etymologist that said he
Speaker 1: read must have spent hundreds of hours digging through tons
Speaker 1: and tons of physical newspapers, journals, private letters, and other documents.
Speaker 1: What that man did was absolutely astounding. And that guy
Speaker 1: Anatoty Lieberman, a linguist and translator of from the University
Speaker 1: of Minnesota, was absolutely right. And what reed did he
Speaker 1: found the day when Okay was born?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the very day, Because there was some trash talking
Speaker 2: going on. The aforementioned editor of the Morning Post, Charles
Speaker 2: Gordon Green, was trash talking with the Providence Journal Rhode
Speaker 2: Island editor and there was something about the There was
Speaker 2: a satirical citizens group called the Anti Bell Ringing Society
Speaker 2: in Boston.
Speaker 3: The A. B. R. S. Green was a member.
Speaker 2: The editor of the Providence Rhode Island Journal was making
Speaker 2: fun of Green, and they were kind of going back
Speaker 2: and forth. And what happens at the end of this exchange.
Speaker 1: Green says all correct, but he spelled it O K
Speaker 1: as an O L L K O R R E
Speaker 1: C T. He abbreviated, purposely misspelled and gave birth to
Speaker 1: O K.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So this in this case it was a lowercase with
Speaker 2: periods little dot, little k dot.
Speaker 3: And this might have actually.
Speaker 2: Gone away again as well, even though it started being
Speaker 2: used a little bit in these penny rags. But along
Speaker 2: comes another coincidence with Martin van Buren, the eighth President
Speaker 2: of the United States, was running for re election. I
Speaker 2: believe he was from the small town of Kinderhook, New York,
Speaker 2: and like Andrew Jackson and Old Hickory, he took on
Speaker 2: the nickname Old Kinderhook.
Speaker 1: And then what happened, well, that became his campaign slogan,
Speaker 1: Okay is okay, Old Kinderhook is okay. And by this time,
Speaker 1: this is the eighteen forty presidential election. He lost to
Speaker 1: William Henry Harrison. I died in thirty days, but the
Speaker 1: okay managed to live on as exactly the meaning that
Speaker 1: we use it for today. Like Okay, that's great, and
Speaker 1: it's actually evolved. I think they meant it much more enthusiastically.
Speaker 3: Like he is okay, right, but.
Speaker 1: The linguist, well, I guess he's the late linguist Alan Metcalf.
Speaker 1: I think he really did a great job at getting
Speaker 1: to the heart of what okay does. Now we don't
Speaker 1: we can use it enthusiastically. Sometimes when we do that,
Speaker 1: we're using it actually sarcastically or telling somebody to get
Speaker 1: off our back. But more often than not, as Metcalf
Speaker 1: pointed out, it's neutral, right, And he really got to
Speaker 1: it when he kind of I should say, he nailed
Speaker 1: it on the head when he when he identified it
Speaker 1: as neutral.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, but an affirmative neutral, So it's an affirmative.
Speaker 3: It affirms.
Speaker 2: It's a reply that affirms something, but not with any
Speaker 2: kind of enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Right, So he was saying like it filled a void. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and avoid that we didn't even know we need it
Speaker 1: because you could do the same thing. You could affirm
Speaker 1: something in the positive with yes, good, fine, excellent, all right.
Speaker 3: Mah wasn't around yet, I guess.
Speaker 1: But all of those say not only yes I'm affirming this,
Speaker 1: but yes, I say I think this is actually like
Speaker 1: a good thing or a positive thing. It has some
Speaker 1: venear to it. Okay is basically just like copy. I
Speaker 1: got it. I know what you're saying, Yes, go ahead
Speaker 1: and do that. I'm not saying I think what you're
Speaker 1: doing is great. But if you're asking me for permission,
Speaker 1: I just gave you permission with just okay. And that's
Speaker 1: just one use of it as being neutral. But I
Speaker 1: think that's a that's a great I think that was
Speaker 1: a lot of great insight.
Speaker 3: He had no totally.
Speaker 2: If you're wondering about okay A why lowercase? There are
Speaker 2: different rules oka A why came after O dot k dot.
Speaker 2: But if you're a writer, they you know, writers use
Speaker 2: things called style guides if you write for newspapers or
Speaker 2: like when we used to write for HowStuffWorks dot.
Speaker 3: Com, we what did we use? Do you remember? We used? Ap?
Speaker 2: So ap uses uppercase, ok no periods. The Chicago Manual
Speaker 2: of Style, which is another popular one, uses both. They
Speaker 2: usually capitalize okah and periods are not necessary but acceptable Grammarly,
Speaker 2: for their part, says okay.
Speaker 3: When you.
Speaker 2: Know, uppercase ok for the beginning of a sentence, but
Speaker 2: lowercase ok a y otherwise and if you're wondering. Overall,
Speaker 2: they found that uppercase ok is used about a third
Speaker 2: of the time, and edited writing and okay ay about
Speaker 2: two thirds of the time, which surprised me because I
Speaker 2: never ever write or type out okay ay.
Speaker 1: Oh I do. That's what I use the most.
Speaker 3: Oh capital okay for me, baby, It.
Speaker 1: Seems aggressive to me, so I tend to shy away
Speaker 1: from that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because now that capitals have taken on a
Speaker 2: meaning of like you're yelling at something.
Speaker 1: Exactly, they're hostile. So a little lowercase okay and that
Speaker 1: auy just adds a little extra like hug on to
Speaker 1: the end of it.
Speaker 3: I like it, all right, I'll consider it.
Speaker 2: What I want to know is how many people are
Speaker 2: going to write in about your entomology joke oh okay.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you Probably few far less now.
Speaker 3: Though, someone just stop typing there, I are.
Speaker 1: Well, since Chuck just referenced somebody stop typing. Obviously, short
Speaker 1: stuff is out.
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