New Delhi: In India, you may have noticed trucks with the signs BLOW HORN OK TATA. OK is a word normally used to signify "all is well".‘OK' is the all-purpose American expression that became an all-purpose English expression and later it became an all-purpose expression in dozens of other languages.It was 175 years ago this Sunday that two little letters ‘all correct' were first linked together in a simple abbreviation—OK. According tolegend, the word first appeared in print, on page two of The Boston Morning Post edition of March 23 ,1839. Boston Morning Post was one of the most popular newspapers in the United States during those days.Editor Charles Gordon Greene was the man who gave birth to OK.Charles Gordon wrote in his edition of March 23:The “Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells,” is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have his “contribution box,” et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.Later OK received publicity by hitting the contentious presidential election jackpot. During the 1840 election the “oll korrect” OK merged with Martin van Buren's nickname, Old Kinderhook, when some van Buren supporters formed the O.K. Club. After the club got into a few tussles with Harrison supporters, OK got mixed up with slandering and sloganeering.OK was the “misunderestimated,” “refudiated,” and “binders full of women” of its day, and it may have ended up with the same transitory fate if not for the fact that at the very same time, the telegraph was coming into use, and OK was there, a handy abbreviation, ready to be of service. By the 1870s it had become the standard way for telegraph operators to acknowledge receiving a transmission, and it was well on its way to becoming the greatest American word.Allan Metcalf, the author of OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, puts it, is that it was “born as a lame joke perpetrated by a newspaper editor in 1839.Metcalf calls OK “the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet”—used more often than “Coke” or an infant's “ma.”
