OK has been discussed extensively on ADS-L, and "Old Kinderhook" is the most widely accepted source among etymologists on that site.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
Sent: 2009-04-29 10:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
Thanks all for your comments. Folk etymologies are sometimes stronger than a "true etymology" in the way they reinforce the popularity of an expression. I'm not sure about the importance of the validity of an etymology in terms of its appropriateness and acceptability. I believe the first documented use of "OK" was in 1839 while Old Kinderhook was President of the U.S., so that origin certainly makes sense. I'm not sure about the ultimate documentation for my explanation that it stands for the facetious acronymic abbreviation of "oll korrect," but this is what's published in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.).
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 7:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
I'm not sure how accurate it is, but the story around Kinderhook New
York (I live in the town of Kinderhook, but the village of Valatie) is
that OK derives from Martin Van Buren, whose nickname was Old
Kinderhook, and who would approve documents by initialing them O K (not
sure if that included periods.) Folk etymologies are not always
accurate, and this one is a source of local pride. I have never checked
up on it in part because I suspect it's not overly solid. I usually tell
it like that: "I'm not sure how true it is, but...."
Craig
O'Sullivan, Brian P wrote:
> Thanks. Now that you mention it, I'd agree with the politically correct about this--at least, I'd agree that the troublesome derivation of "dutch" would be more interesting and more important to discuss with students than the other kinds of "incorrectness" in the sentence. Ideally, I'd want to treat the etymological issues not as a matter of correctness but as a matter of rhetorical awareness; I'd want to ask students to be aware of the figures of speech they use and to think about how different kinds of readers might react to a casual word choice.
>
> (Or maybe, with a big stack of papers in front of me and only a few hours to comment on them, I wouldn't notice anything interesting or problematic about the sentence at all!)
>
> By the way, your comment has made me think that big-D "Dutch" might be better after all; at least it draws attention to the derivation of the word, which seems more honest somehow.
>
> Brian
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of richard betting
> Sent: Tue 4/28/2009 6:22 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: cutting the pear in half
>
> Brian,
> You make a good point about effectiveness. And it seems to me that you pose an interesting question about dutch/Dutch. I think that some people find Dutch politically incorrect so for them its use might be more significant than the other language conventions being discussed here. Dutch with a small d might be preferable for them. The kinds of priorities teachers teachers impose will help determine what students view as significant and will influence how they write.
> Dick Betting
> Professor Emeritus
> Valley City State University
>
>
>
> On Apr 28, 2009, at 4:29 PM, O'Sullivan, Brian P wrote:
>
>
> Bruce,
>
> I agree, on a technical level, with your points about orthography in the sentence under discussion. However, I want to explain why I might ignore these points if I were responding to a student paper.
>
> It's not that I consider "what we [write] somehow more important than how we [write] it"; it's that I consider the effectiveness of how we write more important than the conventional correctness of how we write. Often, I would agree, effectiveness and correctness are related; incorrect grammar, usage and even orthography often impair effective communication. I'm just not sure that such is the case in the sentence we're talking about. While the quotation marks and periods in this sentence do appear to be incorrect according to the conventions you mention, I'm not sure that the writer of this sentence runs any real "risk of not being understood," or even much risk of being significantly less cogent or elegant than a writer who follows the conventions. In particular, it seems to me that the periods in "O.K." will not confuse or distract most readers. And I don't think it's always a good idea to point out all the low-priority problems in a paper; if there are a number of higher priority problems that require discussion, it seems better to focus on them.
>
> As for the risk of changing the conventions of language, I'm not sure that I see how the language would be impoverished if these particular orthographic conventions were to change. We shouldn't resist all changes to conventions of language, should we? There are some changes, like the turn away from using masculine pronouns as universal, that seem positive; there are others, like the diminishing use of the semicolon, that I regret. But there are many changes that are neither good not bad, as far as I'm concerned.
>
> Finally, I have one specific question, out of curiosity; why do you find "Dutch" clearer than "dutch" in this sentence? To me, the meaning of the expression seems very distant from that of the proper adjective from which it is derived--so mightn't proper adjective form be irrelevant, if not distracting?
>
> Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
>
> Brian
>
>
> --- On Tue, 4/28/09, Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> May we go back to the original question? Perhaps the following reply would take us on a different tack.
>
> "That's O.K. We would have had to go 'dutch' anyway."
> What's the verb tense in the reply?
>
> The time reference is present: "That's OK; we would have had to go Dutch anyway."
> I am impressed that the conventions of regular orthography do not seem to be being adhered to in the quote. Here again being literal is dangerous. Maybe we could all adopt the conventions of e. e. cummings and buck regular orthography at the risk of not being understood. An added risk is that we are in the act of changing the conventions of language -- going along with the drift of the younger generations, who must have things simple. Maybe what we say is somehow more important for English teachers than how we say it, or in this case how we write it. The "OK" is an acronym that does not need periods: "oll korrect." The adverb "dutch" does not need quote marks. In this expression it may perhaps be better understood if kept in the form of the proper adjective from which it derives.
>
>
>
>
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