“OK”的成长并不那么OK

OK, so you're familiar with "OK." You probably use it all the time, and not for just one purpose. But do you really know what it means? And if not, are you OK with that?

相信你对"OK"很熟悉了，你可能还在一直使用它。但你真的知道这意味着什么吗?如果不知道其中深意，你也对此“OK”吗?

The word "OK" is one of America's most popular cultural exports, squeezing myriad meanings from just two letters in a way that embodies American ingenuity, enthusiasm and efficiency. It has almost as many origin stories as connotations, but linguists generally agree the word was first published on March 23, 1839, a date now honored annually as OK Day.

“OK”这个词是美国最受欢迎的文化输出词之一，人们从两个字母中提炼出无数含义，体现了美国人的聪明才智，热情和效率。它的起源故事几乎和内涵一样多，但语言学家普遍认为这个词最早发表于1839年3月23日，现在我们称这一天为“OK日”。

So much subtlety in so few letters has made OK a tough nut to crack. But thanks to the late U.S. etymologist Allen Walker Read, we at least have a grasp on where it came from. After diligent research into OK's history, Read published his findings in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964, tracing the term back to a March 23, 1839, article in the Boston Morning Herald (see below).

如此少的字母中竟有如此多的微妙之处，这使得“OK”似乎成为了一个难以攻克的难题。但是感谢已故的美国词源学家Allen Walker Read，我们至少掌握了它的来源。在对OK的历史进行认真研究后，里德于1963年和1964年在《美国演讲》杂志上发表了他的研究成果，他的研究一直追溯到了1839年3月23日《波士顿先驱晨报》的一篇文章。

In the succinct spirit of OK, let's cut to the chase: "OK" is most likely short for "oll korrect," a jokey misspelling of "all correct" that needs a little historical context to make sense. In the late 1830s, a slang fad inspired young, educated folks in Boston and New York to make tongue-in-cheek acronyms for deliberate misspellings of common phrases. This led to arcane abbreviations like K.G. for "no go" ("know go"), N.C. for "enough said" ("nuff ced") and K.Y. for "no use" ("know yuse"). Krazy kids!

本着OK的简洁精神中，让我们切入主题：“OK”很可能是“oll korect”的缩写，这是一个“all correct”的搞笑拼写错误，需要一点历史背景才能理解。在19世纪30年代末，俚语时尚激发了波士顿和纽约受过教育的年轻人，他们故意拼错了一些常用短语，从而产生了一些搞笑的缩略语。这导致了一些晦涩的缩写，比如 k.g 代表“no go”(“know go”) ，N.C. 代表“enough said”(“nuff ced”) ，k.y. 代表“no use”(“know yuse”)。真是群折腾人的“熊孩子”!

Printing "o.k." in a big-city newspaper helped it rise above other trendy initials, but it soon got an even bigger publicity boost. That's because 1840 was a U.S. election year, and incumbent President Martin van Buren happened to be nicknamed "Old Kinderhook" after his birthplace of Kinderhook, N.Y. Hoping to capitalize on this coincidence, van Buren's Democratic Party supporters formed the O.K. Club to promote him before the 1840 election, according to Oxford University Press.

在一家大城市的报纸上印刷“o.k.”,有助于它超越其他时髦的首字母，而且很快它就得到了更大的宣传推动。这是因为1840年是美国选举年，现任总统马丁·范布伦(Martin van Buren)的绰号恰好是“老金德胡克”(Old Kinderhook)，以他在纽约金德胡克(Kinderhook)的出生地命名。牛津大学(Oxford University Pres)的数据显示，为了利用这一巧合，范布伦的民主党支持者在1840年选举前成立了“英国俱乐部”(O.K.Club)来大力宣传.

While OK didn't get O.K. re-elected — he lost to Whig William Henry Harrison — the word did get stuck in America's memory. Its roots were soon forgotten, though, partly due to the same election-year chaos that popularized it. Whigs used it to mock former president and van Buren ally Andrew Jackson, for example, claiming Jackson invented it to cover up his own misspelling of "all correct." Van Buren critics also turned the acronym against him, with insults like "out of kash" and "orful katastrophe."

虽然OK没有再次当选——他输给了辉格党的威廉·亨利·哈里森——但这个词却深深地留在了美国的记忆中。然而，它的根源很快就被遗忘了，部分原因是同一个选举年的混乱使它普及。例如，辉格党人用它来嘲弄前总统和范布伦的盟友安德鲁·杰克逊，声称杰克逊发明它是为了掩盖自己拼写错误的“全部正确”。范布伦的批评者们还把这个词的首字母缩写改为“out of kash”和“orful katastrophe”之类的侮辱性词语来攻击他。

OK may have been the real winner in 1840, but it still took a while to become "America's greatest word," a title bestowed by author Allan Metcalf in his 2010 book about OK. Top 19th-century writers including Mark Twain shied away from it, according to Metcalf, providing little literary legitimacy until a variant of OK was used in 1918 by Woodrow Wilson, the only U.S. president with a Ph.D. (OK was further legitimized in 2018 and 2019, when it was added to two official Scrabble dictionaries.)

OK可能是1840年真正的赢家，但它仍然需要一段时间才能成为“美国最伟大的词”，作者艾伦·梅特卡夫在2010年出版的关于OK的书中授予了这个称号。据梅特卡夫说，包括马克吐温在内的19世纪顶级作家都回避了这一点，直到1918年美国唯一一位拥有博士学位的总统伍德罗威尔逊(Woodrow Wilson)使用了“OK”的变体(在2018年和2019年，“OK”被进一步合法化，并被添加到了两本官方拼字词典中)。

This long path to ubiquity can be partly mapped by Google Ngram, which charts annual word usage across 500 years' worth of books. It doesn't include spoken OKs, or even all the written ones, but it's still an interesting look at the word's popularity, which apparently surged in the late 20th century:

谷歌Ngram见证了“OK”一词成长起来的光辉历程，他们绘制了近500年以来图书的年度单词使用量图表。不包括口头的，甚至不包括所有的书面的，但它仍不失为作为一个有趣的角度借以审视这个词的流行趋势：在20世纪后期，OK使用频率飙升。

Much of OK's success can be attributed to its brevity and flexibility, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which notes "it filled a need for a quick way to write an approval on a document, bill, etc." It has also evolved to fill many other linguistic niches, like granting permission ("That's OK by me"), conveying status or safety ("Are you OK?"), calling to action or changing the subject ("OK, what's next?"), and even hinting at mediocrity or disappointment ("We had an OK time at the party").

根据在线词源词典，OK的成功很大程度上归因于它的简洁性和灵活性，该词典指出：“它填补了对文件、账单等快速审批方式的需求。”它还发展到填补了许多其他语言领域的空缺，如授予许可(“我没问题”)、传达状态或安全(“你还好吗?”，调用动作或更改主题(“好，接下来是什么?”)甚至暗示平庸或失望(“我们在聚会上玩的还行”)。

The Boston Morning Herald may have been first to print OK, and that instance was clearly decoded as "all correct," but it's still impossible to rule out many alternative origins. Woodrow Wilson argued it should be spelled "okeh," for instance, because he thought it came from the Choctaw word okeh for "it is so." That's a longstanding explanation, but its support has faded due to lack of evidence.

《波士顿先驱晨报》可能是第一个出版《OK》的报纸，而且被明确解释为“完全正确”，但仍然不可能排除许多其他来源。例如，伍德罗·威尔逊(Woodrow Wilson)认为，这个词的拼写应该是“okeh”，因为他认为这个词来源于乔克托语“okeh”，意思是“的确如此”。这是一个由来已久的解释，但由于缺乏证据，它的支持力度已经减弱。

Other theories also see shades of OK beyond American English, in terms like Scots' och aye ("yes, indeed"), Greek's ola kala ("all is well"), Finnish's oikea ("correct") and Mandingo's O ke ("certainly"). Complicating matters is that some people now spell OK "okay," a newer variant. Even in the acronym camp, though, some argue OK came from the shorthand for "zero killed" on battlefield reports.

其他的理论也看到了美国英语以外的“OK”的影子，比如苏格兰人的“och aye”(“是的，确实的”)、希腊人的“ola kala”(“一切都很好”)、芬兰人的“oikea”(“正确的”)和曼丁戈人的“o ke”(“肯定的”)。更复杂的是，有些人现在拼写“好的”，一个新的变体。尽管如此，一些人认为，即使是在缩略词camp中，“OK”也源于战场报告中“零死亡”的简写。

Oxford describes a potential link from OK to West Africa's Mandingo language as "the only other theory with at least a degree of plausibility," but adds that "historical evidence ... may be hard to unearth." As with much of U.S. culture, OK could just be a blend of concepts and syllables from around the planet, slowly gelling over generations. Whoever coined it, it's now widely used as a loanword in other languages, providing a pithy verbal package for what NPR calls "America's can-do philosophy." And with that much global reach, OK has probably grown too big for us to ever dig up its roots.

牛津认为OK与西非的曼丁哥语之间的潜在联系是“唯一有一定可信度的理论”(除去上文所述之外)，但补充说这也只是历史了，难以找到确凿证据。和许多美国文化一样，OK可能只是来自世界各地的概念和音节的混合体，然后在几代人之中流传。不管是谁创造了这个词，它现在在其他语言中已广泛用作外来词了，NPR称此现象为“‘美国无所不能’哲学”。只是唯一确定的是，随着OK的使用范围在全球内扩大，我们已经无法挖掘它的根基。