United States of America

Fabulous Las Vegas

Newfoundlanders Betty Young of Deer Lake, Norma Jones of Bishop’s Cove, and Susan Vokey of Glovertown hit the strip in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.

Graphic designer Betty Willis designed the iconic 25-foot-tall roadside Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. Built and installed in 1959 by Western Neon, the sign is located at 5100 Las Vegas Boulevard South – considered to be the official southern end of the Las Vegas strip, though it is actually outside city limits. In 2014, solar panels were installed, providing enough electricity to completely offset the energy used by the famous landmark.

The Frozen Tundra

Opened in 1957, Lambeau Field is the oldest stadium with a National Football League team – the Green Bay Packers – in continuous residence. The Packers, one of the most-storied franchises in the NFL, have won more championships than any other team in the league’s history. The stadium’s nickname, Frozen Tundra, was spawned by the “Ice Bowl” game between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys played on December 31, 1967, in -25°C (-13°F) weather.

The Golden City

Jason Cribb waves the NL flag at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. Once called “the bridge that couldn’t be built,” the 2.7-kilometre (1.7-mile) long, world-renowned Golden Gate Bridge is now San Francisco’s most famous landmark. Construction began in 1933 and, despite persistent wind, fog and treacherous tides, the massive project was completed just four years later in 1937. The bridge takes its name from the Golden Gate Strait it crosses, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County in northern California.

Expert answers to common life questions.

By Linda Browne

Where does the phrase “OK” come from?

It’s considered one of the most widely used phrases on the planet, but how did we start saying “OK”?

Its origin story has caused such debate and intrigue that the late American etymologist and lexicographer, Allen Walker Read, wrote a whole series of articles about it in the journal American Speech in the 1960s (much of which is discussed by Allan Metcalf in his 2011 book, OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word). David Wilton, a researcher in historical linguistics, etymology and slang origins, dives into Read’s findings in his book, Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends.

While there are dozens of theories attempting to explain the origin of “OK,” Wilton says one of those that come closest to the truth involves Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States (nicknamed “Old Kinderhook” for the town of his birth). But while “OK” does not in fact stand for “Old Kinderhook,” Van Buren did play a role in the term’s rise to fame.

The real origin can be traced back to newspaper editors in Boston, Massachusetts, and their penchant for abbreviating, almost two centuries ago. “This practice is much the same as what we see on the internet today…,” Wilton writes (think OMG, BRB and LOL).

“Often these Boston editors would deliberately misspell an abbreviation. On June 18, 1838, some nine months before OK makes its appearance, the Boston Morning Post included the following: ‘We jumped in, and were not disappointed either with the carriage, distance or price. It was O.W. – (all right),’” he goes on to explain, noting, “Clearly, the editor is abbreviating the phrase as if it were spelled oll wright.”

Papers in New York, Wilton says, quickly followed suit (“using K.G. for no go, K.Y. for no use, and K.K.N. for commit no nuisance”). And finally, on March 23, 1839, OK made its debut in (again) the Boston Morning Post, where an editor wrote “o.k. –all correct…”

“Over the next few weeks and months, the Morning Post reused OK several times, and by September the term had travelled south. The New York Evening Tattler first used OK on the second of that month. The newspaper abbreviation fad hit New Orleans in October, and in November both the fad and OK began appearing in Philadelphia papers. The term was off and running,” Wilton writes.

Enter President Van Buren. In March of 1840, one year after OK officially came on the scene, “New York Democrats formed an organization called the OK Club. The name of the club stood for Old Kinderhook, as Martin Van Buren was running for reelection that year,” Wilton says.

“Since OK was in widespread use prior to the formation of the OK Club, it seems likely that the name of the club was due, at least in part, to the phrase. In choosing the name, Democrats were linking their candidate, Old Kinderhook, with the phrase that meant “all is right.”

During the campaign, Wilton adds, the initials O.K. could be found all over the place. “They appeared on signs, in newspapers, in pamphlets. They were shouted at meetings and conventions across the United States. Old Kinderhook was not the origin of the word, but it was probably what cemented the word’s place in American speech.”

In a 2011 piece for the BBC, the aforementioned Allan Metcalf notes that within a decade following the campaign, “people began actually marking OK on documents and using OK on the telegraph to signal that all was well. So OK had found its niche, being easy to say or write and also distinctive enough to be clear... in the 20th century, OK moved from margin to mainstream, gradually becoming a staple of nearly everyone’s conversation…”

But why did newspaper editors get such a kick out of these misspelled abbreviations all those years ago? Who knows? But humour (and language) evolves over time, and what made people LOL back then might not today. And that’s OK.

Do you have a burning life question for Linda to investigate? Turn to page 9 for ways to contact us.