{"id":1458,"date":"2012-04-20T19:51:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T19:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=1458"},"modified":"2012-04-19T19:54:55","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T19:54:55","slug":"david-crystals-english-in-100-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/20\/david-crystals-english-in-100-words\/","title":{"rendered":"David Crystal’s English in 100 Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last October, I highlighted<\/a> the linguist David Crystal\u2019s new book, The Story of English in 100 Words<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It appears the book has just come out in America, as Crystal has given a fairly lengthy interview to NPR. You can listen to the interview and read some extracts over at NPR’s website<\/a>. My favourite extract is this, about the origins of ‘OK’.<\/p>\n

On the origins of ‘OK’<\/strong><\/p>\n

“One of the reasons why I love it is because of the point that Roger has made, and that is that it has had so many guesses for its origins. I stopped counting at 50.<\/p>\n

“I think we do now know where OK comes from. There was a great American lexicographer called Allen Walker Read, who many years ago did a huge study and found out that the word ‘OK’ first appeared in the 1830s … in a newspaper in Boston. Because at the time, there was a vogue for inventing humorous abbreviations using initial letters.<\/p>\n

“And OK came, at that point in time, from ‘oll korrect,’ … O-L-L for ‘all,’ and K-O-R-R-E-C-T for ‘correct.’ Now, there were dozens of other abbreviations in the Boston newspaper at the time, and most of them had disappeared. But this one didn’t. OK stayed. And the reason is it had a completely fresh boost of life the following year, when it began to be used as a slogan in the U.S. elections in 1840.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last October, I highlighted the linguist David Crystal\u2019s new book, The Story of English in 100 Words. It appears the book has just come out in America, as Crystal has given a fairly lengthy interview to NPR. You can listen to the interview and read some extracts over at NPR’s website. My favourite extract is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,45],"tags":[3,813,988,25],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","tag-english","tag-english-language","tag-language-origins","tag-languages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}