{"id":11827,"date":"2026-09-05T07:48:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=11827"},"modified":"2026-09-05T07:48:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:48:45","slug":"a-boston-newspaper-editor-made-a-dumb-joke-in-1839-it-became-the-worlds-most-popular-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=11827","title":{"rendered":"A Boston newspaper editor made a dumb joke in 1839. It became the world\u2019s most popular word."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post printed a joke abbreviation for \u201coll korrect.\u201d It became the most ubiquitous expression in the English language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 23, 1839, Boston Morning Post editor Charles Gordon Greene was writing a satirical piece making fun of the Providence Journal. At the end of a throwaway paragraph, he stuck in an abbreviation: \u201co.k.\u201d It stood for \u201coll korrect,\u201d which was an intentionally misspelled version of \u201call correct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That joke became the most widely used expression in the English language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene wasn\u2019t being random. According to History.com, the late 1830s were in the grip of an abbreviation craze, especially among young, educated elites in Boston. The twist was that they deliberately misspelled words first, then abbreviated them. It was the 1800s version of texting slang, and apparently it was hilarious at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OK,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other abbreviations from that era included \u201cKG\u201d for \u201cknow go\u201d (no go), \u201cKY\u201d for \u201cknow yuse\u201d (no use), \u201cOW\u201d for \u201coll wright\u201d (all right), and \u201cSP\u201d for \u201csmall potatoes.\u201d Most of these died out almost immediately. OK should have died with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why OK caught on when others didn\u2019t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But it got a second life thanks to politics. When Martin Van Buren ran for president in 1840, his supporters formed the \u201cO.K. Club,\u201d playing off his nickname \u201cOld Kinderhook\u201d after his New York hometown. Meanwhile, the opposing Whig Party weaponized OK, claiming Van Buren\u2019s mentor Andrew Jackson had invented it to cover up his terrible spelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Buren lost the election. OK won everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of 1839, OK had already appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, the New York Evening Tattler, and the Philadelphia Gazette. After the 1840 campaign circus, it spread into everyday American speech and never left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decades of wrong guesses about its origin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For over a century, nobody knew where OK actually came from. Theories included a popular army biscuit manufacturer named Orrin Kendall, a Haitian port called Aux Cayes known for its rum, a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk, and President Woodrow Wilson\u2019s personal favorite: a Choctaw word he spelled \u201cokeh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until the 1960s that Columbia University linguist Allen Walker Read traced OK back to that 1839 Boston Morning Post article. He spent years systematically disproving every other theory and published his findings in 1963-64. The mystery was solved. A throwaway joke about intentional misspelling had become one of America\u2019s greatest linguistic exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How OK became truly universal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, OK works as an affirmation (\u201cCan I go?\u201d \u201cOK.\u201d), an exclamation (\u201cI got the job! OK!\u201d), a description of mediocrity (\u201cHow was the movie?\u201d \u201cOK.\u201d), and about a dozen other things depending on your tone of voice. It\u2019s understood across languages and cultures. It shows up in text messages, business emails, casual conversation, and formal agreements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All because Charles Gordon Greene thought it would be funny to write \u201coll korrect\u201d in a newspaper 187 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post printed a joke abbreviation for \u201coll korrect.\u201d It became the most ubiquitous expression in the English language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/796972369_29305340382386914_8298499779183137977_n.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11829,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11827\/revisions\/11829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}