“OK”的成長并不那么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?

相信你對"OK"很熟悉了，你可能還在一直使用它。但你真的知道這意味著什么嗎?如果不知道其中深意，你也對此“OK”嗎?

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”這個詞是美國最受歡迎的文化輸出詞之一，人們從兩個字母中提煉出無數(shù)含義，體現(xiàn)了美國人的聰明才智，熱情和效率。它的起源故事幾乎和內涵一樣多，但語言學家普遍認為這個詞最早發(fā)表于1839年3月23日，現(xiàn)在我們稱這一天為“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處，這使得“OK”似乎成為了一個難以攻克的難題。但是感謝已故的美國詞源學家Allen Walker Read，我們至少掌握了它的來源。在對OK的歷史進行認真研究后，里德于1963年和1964年在《美國演講》雜志上發(fā)表了他的研究成果，他的研究一直追溯到了1839年3月23日《波士頓先驅晨報》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!

本著OK的簡潔精神中，讓我們切入主題：“OK”很可能是“oll korect”的縮寫，這是一個“all correct”的搞笑拼寫錯誤，需要一點歷史背景才能理解。在19世紀30年代末，俚語時尚激發(fā)了波士頓和紐約受過教育的年輕人，他們故意拼錯了一些常用短語，從而產生了一些搞笑的縮略語。這導致了一些晦澀的縮寫，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”)。真是群折騰人的“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.

在一家大城市的報紙上印刷“o.k.”,有助于它超越其他時髦的首字母，而且很快它就得到了更大的宣傳推動。這是因為1840年是美國選舉年，現(xiàn)任總統(tǒng)馬丁·范布倫(Martin van Buren)的綽號恰好是“老金德胡克”(Old Kinderhook)，以他在紐約金德胡克(Kinderhook)的出生地命名。牛津大學(Oxford University Pres)的數(shù)據顯示，為了利用這一巧合，范布倫的民主黨支持者在1840年選舉前成立了“英國俱樂部”(O.K.Club)來大力宣傳.

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."

雖然OK沒有再次當選——他輸給了輝格黨的威廉·亨利·哈里森——但這個詞卻深深地留在了美國的記憶中。然而，它的根源很快就被遺忘了，部分原因是同一個選舉年的混亂使它普及。例如，輝格黨人用它來嘲弄前總統(tǒng)和范布倫的盟友安德魯·杰克遜，聲稱杰克遜發(fā)明它是為了掩蓋自己拼寫錯誤的“全部正確”。范布倫的批評者們還把這個詞的首字母縮寫改為“out of kash”和“orful katastrophe”之類的侮辱性詞語來攻擊他。

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年真正的贏家，但它仍然需要一段時間才能成為“美國最偉大的詞”，作者艾倫·梅特卡夫在2010年出版的關于OK的書中授予了這個稱號。據梅特卡夫說，包括馬克吐溫在內的19世紀頂級作家都回避了這一點，直到1918年美國唯一一位擁有博士學位的總統(tǒng)伍德羅威爾遜(Woodrow Wilson)使用了“OK”的變體(在2018年和2019年，“OK”被進一步合法化，并被添加到了兩本官方拼字詞典中)。

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見證了“OK”一詞成長起來的光輝歷程，他們繪制了近500年以來圖書的年度單詞使用量圖表。不包括口頭的，甚至不包括所有的書面的，但它仍不失為作為一個有趣的角度借以審視這個詞的流行趨勢：在20世紀后期，OK使用頻率飆升。

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").

根據在線詞源詞典，OK的成功很大程度上歸因于它的簡潔性和靈活性，該詞典指出：“它填補了對文件、賬單等快速審批方式的需求。”它還發(fā)展到填補了許多其他語言領域的空缺，如授予許可(“我沒問題”)、傳達狀態(tài)或安全(“你還好嗎?”，調用動作或更改主題(“好，接下來是什么?”)甚至暗示平庸或失望(“我們在聚會上玩的還行”)。

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.

《波士頓先驅晨報》可能是第一個出版《OK》的報紙，而且被明確解釋為“完全正確”，但仍然不可能排除許多其他來源。例如，伍德羅·威爾遜(Woodrow Wilson)認為，這個詞的拼寫應該是“okeh”，因為他認為這個詞來源于喬克托語“okeh”，意思是“的確如此”。這是一個由來已久的解釋，但由于缺乏證據，它的支持力度已經減弱。

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.

其他的理論也看到了美國英語以外的“OK”的影子，比如蘇格蘭人的“och aye”(“是的，確實的”)、希臘人的“ola kala”(“一切都很好”)、芬蘭人的“oikea”(“正確的”)和曼丁戈人的“o ke”(“肯定的”)。更復雜的是，有些人現(xiàn)在拼寫“好的”，一個新的變體。盡管如此，一些人認為，即使是在縮略詞camp中，“OK”也源于戰(zhàn)場報告中“零死亡”的簡寫。

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.

牛津認為OK與西非的曼丁哥語之間的潛在聯(lián)系是“唯一有一定可信度的理論”(除去上文所述之外)，但補充說這也只是歷史了，難以找到確鑿證據。和許多美國文化一樣，OK可能只是來自世界各地的概念和音節(jié)的混合體，然后在幾代人之中流傳。不管是誰創(chuàng)造了這個詞，它現(xiàn)在在其他語言中已廣泛用作外來詞了，NPR稱此現(xiàn)象為“‘美國無所不能’哲學”。只是唯一確定的是，隨著OK的使用范圍在全球內擴大，我們已經無法挖掘它的根基。