OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word (Oxford University Press), by Allan Metcalf

The origin of OK as a joke in a 1830s Boston newspaper has been pretty well established. MacMurray College English professor Allan Metcalf dwells instead on the meaning of OKnot just its variable usage as interjection or confirmation, noun, verb or adverb, but its wider significance as a word in common speech around the world. I don’t think Metcalf’s assertion that “OK is also America’s answer to Shakespeare” is OK at all, unless he’s asserting that the U.S. is a dim, sub-literate nation. He makes a better point when identifying OK as representing American pragmatism and efficiency, but perhaps should be more alarmed by the fact that OK is rarely a ringing endorsement but more a shrug of indifferent acceptance.