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The Most Popular Word in the World

2018-03-16 · explainer · Hank · 3:48 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Explainer

Hank argues that 'OK' is a weird word, an approval without values that many languages have adopted, and traces its origins through West African and Choctaw theories to an 1830s newspaper fad of misspelling acronyms, popularised by Martin Van Buren's 'Old Kinderhook' and telegrams; its wonder is that it is so ordinary.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — OK is a weird word: what it means, and its spread to languages worldwide

  • ★★ Hank says OK is a weird word: it means fine, good, satisfactory or approved, yet none of those words has a K, and no other words are just capital letters. — 00:00:00 · OK
  • ★★ Hank says OK is possibly the most spoken word on the planet, not only because Americans say it a lot but because people say it everywhere. (hedged) — 00:00:13 · OK, United States
  • ★★ Hank says many languages, from Mandarin to Hebrew, Flemish, Russian, 'Indian' and Portuguese, have adopted OK as a common affirmative word. — 00:00:29 · OK
  • ★★★ Hank says OK approves of something but not a lot, a word for good without the good: an acceptance without values, perspective or opinions, and he wants to be able to just be OK. — 00:00:40 · OK

00:01:04 — Where OK came from: the list of etymologies, three prime theories, the 1830s acronym fad, Van Buren and telegrams

  • ★ Hank says Wikipedia's only page listing potential etymologies for a word is about OK and is very long, with candidates like Scottish 'och aye' and Greek 'ola kala'. — 00:01:05 · Wikipedia, OK
  • ★★ Hank says etymologists and historians have settled on three prime theories of OK's origin. — 00:01:19 · OK
  • ★★ Hank gives the first theory, a West African origin brought to the US by slaves: a verified 1784 use of 'K' transcribes something a slave said in North Carolina. — 00:01:22 · OK, United States
  • ★★ Hank says that 'K' may come from a common West African phrase, 'o ke' or 'waw-kay' depending on the language, that is an affirmative or backchannel. (hedged) — 00:01:36 · OK
  • ★ Hank explains that a backchannel is a noise or word linguists name for signalling you understood, and OK is still used as one. — 00:01:45 · OK
  • ★★ Hank gives the second theory, the Choctaw word 'okeh', hard to translate but probably meaning 'it is so', and apparently also sometimes a backchannel. (hedged) — 00:02:01 · OK
  • ★★★ Hank says what is known is that OK entered the popular American lexicon in the late 1830s through a newspaper fad of comic misspellings turned into acronyms. — 00:02:17 · OK, United States
  • ★★ Hank says a similar acronym was 'OW' for 'oll wright', and later 'oll korrect' gave 'OK'. — 00:02:38 · OK
  • ★★★ Hank says OK would have been forgotten like the other acronyms if the Democratic Party had not applied it to Martin Van Buren. — 00:02:47 · OK
  • ★★ Hank says Van Buren was from Kinderhook, New York, and was called Old Kinderhook; his name, Hank guesses, sounded too Dutch. — 00:03:05
  • ★★ Hank says OK probably would not have stuck had people not sought to save characters on telegrams, paid by the letter. (hedged) — 00:03:09 · OK

00:03:23 — OK is amazing because it is so ordinary; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank says the amazing thing about OK is how normal and everyday it is despite being weird; it sits unnoticed in the fabric of culture, yet it is confusing and amazing. — 00:03:23 · OK

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description calls BS on the argument that OK is the most spoken word, which must be 'the' or 'I' or a Mandarin equivalent; Hank calls it most popular for its adoption as a loanword. — video description · OK
  • ★★ Hank grants that a word like 'taxi' may be adopted into more languages, but says OK is adopted for everyday conversation while 'taxi' serves only specific situations. (hedged) — video description · OK
  • ★★ Hank says that while today's memes spread differently and faster, the 1830s acronyms from comic misspellings show memes have been around a long time under another name. — video description · OK
  • ★★ Hank says the Democratic Party seizing on a meme to promote a candidate with a less-than-American-sounding name feels much more 2018 than 1838. — video description · United States
  • ★★ Hank says Van Buren was the first president who was neither British nor of British ancestry, a big deal at the time. — video description
  • ★★ Hank says OK's creation partly depended on society becoming more text-based and literate, helped by telegrams and by newspapers. — video description · OK
  • ★★★ Hank says how those technologies revolutionized communication is hard to grasp now, but worth considering as new communication technologies remake our world; their effects will be long-ranging and maybe invisible, as OK's have been for 175 years. (hedged) — video description · OK

Mentioned

Central: OK

Also: People: Martin Van Buren

Organizations: Democratic Party · Wikipedia

Groups: Native Americans in the United States

Concepts: backchannel (linguistics) · Choctaw language · Flemish · Greek language · Hebrew language · Mandarin Chinese · Portuguese language · Russian language · slavery in the United States · telegraphy

Places: Kinderhook, New York · North Carolina · United States · West Africa

Only in the description or credits: Internet meme · literacy

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