All Correct?

There's a word that we use, overuse, misuse and abuse in the English language. It's a simple enough word. I'm sure anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of English has heard it. In fact it has even been accepted into the regional languages to an extent that it is a brand name of a mass market soap.

The word is OK. Is it even a real word? Just two alphabets, pronounced individually not as 'oak'. Sometimes it tries to become a real word spelt as 'okay'.

We use it when we are fine with the state of affairs. We use it when we find something just ordinary. We use it to agree. We also use it to demonstrate comprehension. There are so many different ways of using it.

This ubiquitous little word has almost become a punctuation mark in the English language. There are whole conversations that can happen with a monologue at one end and a series of OKs from the other. That is the power of OK.

I did some research on how this word came into being. It seems the word first was attested in 1839. It came out of a fad that existed in Boston and New York of abbreviating deliberate misspellings of common phrases. For example, KG was short for Know Go or No Go. Similarly OK was short for All Correct spelt as Oll Korrect.

Over the years, only OK has survived and thrived. It's strange to find the roots of the word in common street slang, that too in a fad. What's most ironical is that it has its birth in a deliberate misspelling. A word that means All Correct is actually born out of typos.

No wonder OK, though handy, sometimes just cannot say everything one wants to. It most often means 'I'm not sure I agree with you but let's get on with life.' OKs are quite often used under duress. They are reluctant acceptances of unpleasant tidings. All Correct? No, Oll Korrect. That's what OK really stands for.