Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: the meaning of O.K.

Remembering you my difficult in speaking (and writing of course) in
this half-unknown language, i'll try to report you the meaning of the
term "O.K."... well, what a friend of mine told me as truth.
He said the term is due to a war time, maybe world war ||, and when US
soldiers came back from a mission, base camp asked for the result of
it, and they used to answer O.K. meaning 0 kills, no dead men in the
mission, it was gone all right.
there's anybody here who can tell me if all this is truth, or just a
ball?
(if you like, i'll be so happy to know every kind of mistakes in this
text, via E-mail too, if you think this could bug the rest of NG)
thanks a lot
--
the Harlequin
-------------------------------------------------------
"scherzando, si puň dire tutto, anche la veritŕ"- Freud
visitate 
http://members.xoom.it/nuvolecarta/Nuvoledicarta.htm
ultimo aggiornamento : 18/8/1999


Ci sono pochi argomenti più controversi dell'origine della parola 'okay'. Mi
sento di dire, innanzitutto, che questa versione è fra le meno verosimili,
perchè l'espressione era in uso fin dall'800. La maggior parte delle
spiegazioni infatti fanno riferimento a eventi della metà del secolo scorso.
Allego questa spiegazione tratta dal Linguist Site della Eastern Michigan
University che sembra attendibile. L'autore è Zvi Gilbert:
There have been many versions of the origin of OK, but it seems that
its "true" origins have been conclusively established by one Allen
Walker Read of Columbia University in _American Speech_ in 1963 and
1964.  As some of the denizens of LINGUIST may not be aware of this, I
will summarize it here.
"The letters stand for "oll korrect" and are the result of a fad for
comical abbreviations that flourished in the 1830s and 1840s.  Read
buttressed his arguments with hundreds of citations from newspapers
and other documents of the period...the fad began in Boston in the
summer of 1838...Many of the abbreviations were exaggerated
misspellings which were a stock in trade of humourists of the day.
One predecessor of OK was OW "oll wright", and there was also KY "know
yuse"...Most of the acronyms enjoyed only a brief popularity but OK
was an exception... Democratic supporters of Martin Van Buren adopted
it as the name of their political club, thereby giving OK a double
meaning ("Old Kinderhook" as Van Buren was known, was a native of
Kinderhook, NY).  OK became the warcry of Tammany hooligans in New
York... and was mentioned in newspaper stories across the country...by
the time the campaign was over, the expression had taken firm root
nationwide..."
I quote the above from Cecil Adams' brilliant book _More of the
Straight Dope_, a companion volume to his first, _The Straight Dope_.
No aspiring know-it-all ought to be without these two books.
There's about a billion other theories, but apparently, there's
evidence for this one.
http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/3/3-123.html

 mission, it was gone all right.
L'avevo sentita anch'io... Ma c'è un motivo che andrebbe contro questa
interpretazione: difficilmente gli americani non subivano perdite fra i
piloti durante le azioni aeree: nel Pacifico, battaglia di Guadalcanal
compresa, le perdite di piloti americani erano numerosissime e continue,
nonostante l'inferiorità numerica e tecnica giapponese. Lo stesso vale per
le azioni di bombardamento sulle città del nord Italia fra il 43 e il 45;
oltre alle diverse migliaia di inermi civili uccisi in quei bombardamenti,
molti erano i piloti americani abbattuti dalla contraerea o dalla caccia
tedesche.
Questo dovrebbe fare sollevare un dubbio: un modo di dire diventato così
comune dovrebbe avere come origine una frase talmente ripetuta e talmente
frequente che, onestamente, non credo sia la frase "0 kills".
Paolo

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 term "O.K."... well, what a friend of mine told me as truth.
hmmm....
IMHO. 'O' is too ambiguous to be used in the army. They'd probably use
'zero' . And they would never use a term 'killed' - too direct, much
more likely to use some obscure euphemism instead. 
OK is short for 'oll korrect' a variation on 'all correct', according to
my dictionary.
Then there is the variation A-Ok. 
cheers,
Loki

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