OK：一个征服世界的拼写玩笑
"OK" may be the most widely used word on the planet. People say it in English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and dozens of other languages. But it started out as a silly joke in an American newspaper.
In the late 1830s, young people in Boston had a strange hobby. They loved making up abbreviations for deliberately misspelled phrases. "OW" stood for "oll wright" (all right), and "KY" stood for "know yuse" (no use). It was the kind of joke that only made sense if you were in on it.
On 23 March 1839, the Boston Morning Post printed "o.k." as short for "oll korrect" – a joke spelling of "all correct". Most of these abbreviations disappeared quickly, but OK got lucky.
The next year, in 1840, President Martin Van Buren was running for re-election. He came from a town called Kinderhook in New York, and his supporters nicknamed him "Old Kinderhook". They formed "OK Clubs" and used OK as a campaign slogan. Van Buren lost the election, but the word won. OK spread across the United States, and then around the world.
For a long time, nobody knew where OK really came from, and people suggested all sorts of explanations. It was only in the 1960s that an American language expert, Allen Walker Read, tracked down the old newspapers and solved the mystery.
So OK began as a misspelling, became a political slogan and ended up as one of the most useful words in the world. Not bad for a joke.
“OK”可能是地球上使用最广泛的一个词。人们说英语、中文、日语、西班牙语以及其他几十种语言时，都会用到它。可它最初只是美国报纸上的一个无聊玩笑。
19 世纪 30 年代末，波士顿的年轻人有个奇怪的爱好：他们喜欢给故意拼错的短语编缩写。“OW”代表“oll wright”（all right，好的），“KY”代表“know yuse”（no use，没用）。这种玩笑，只有圈内人才看得懂。
1839 年 3 月 23 日，《波士顿晨邮报》印出了“o.k.”，作为“oll korrect”的缩写——这是“all correct（全都正确）”的玩笑拼法。这类缩写大多很快就消失了，但 OK 运气不错。
第二年，也就是 1840 年，美国总统马丁·范布伦竞选连任。他来自纽约州一个叫金德胡克的小镇，支持者们给他起了个外号叫“老金德胡克”（Old Kinderhook）。他们成立了“OK 俱乐部”，把 OK 当作竞选口号。范布伦输掉了选举，可这个词赢了。OK 传遍了美国，接着又传遍了全世界。
很长一段时间里，没人知道 OK 到底是怎么来的，人们提出了各种各样的解释。直到 20 世纪 60 年代，美国语言学家艾伦·沃克·里德找到了当年的旧报纸，才解开了这个谜。
就这样，OK 从一个错误拼写开始，变成了政治口号，最后成了世界上最有用的词之一。对一个玩笑来说，这结局还真不赖。