大家对“OK”这个英文单词都非常很熟悉，你可能在日常生活中经常也常会用到它，而且使用它的场合和目的也不尽相同，但你真的知道“OK” 这个词的所有什么意思吗?

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”是美国最受欢迎的文化输出词之一，简短两个字母就蕴含了诸多意义，体现美国人的创造力、热情和高效。关于这个词起源的说法之多几乎赶得上其含义的多样了，但语言学家普遍认为，这个词首次于1839年3月23日出现在一家出版物上。如今，每年的3月23日被定为“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.

“OK”这个仅由两个字母组成的词却有如此多的含义，这让寻找其起源变得非常棘手，但多亏了已故的美国词源学家艾伦·沃克·里德，至少我们让对它的来源有所了解。在认真研究“OK”的历史后，里德分别于1963年和1964年在《美国演讲》杂志上发表了他的研究成果。根据他的研究，“OK”一词最早出现在1839年3月23日《波士顿先驱晨报》的一篇文章上。

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.

既然“OK”这个词如此简单明了，那我们也快速切入正题：“OK”很可能是“oll korrect”（all correct的高校拼写错误)的缩写，这是一个滑稽的拼写错误，因此我们需要一些历史背景知识我们才能理解这一点：在19世纪30年代末时，一股俚语热潮席卷了波士顿和纽约受过教育的年轻人，他们为了制造搞笑的首字母缩略词而故意拼错一些常见短语。

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.

一家美国大城市报纸上出现的“o.k.”也使这个词的流行度超越了其他时髦的首字母缩写，而且“OK”很快得到了更广泛的宣传推动。这是因为1840年为美国的大选年，时任总统马丁•范布伦因出生在纽约的“Kinderhook”，因此昵称为“Old Kinderhook”；根据牛津大学出版社，范布伦的民主党支持者希望利用这个巧合来帮助他竞选，于是在1840年大选前夕，他的支持者们便组成“O.K.俱乐部”为其宣传拉票。

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."

虽然OK没有助祝马丁•范布伦再次当选美国总统——他输给了辉格党人威廉•亨利•哈里森——但“OK”这一个词确实留在了美国人的记忆中。不过，人们很快就忘了它的来源，部分原因是同一选举年的混乱宣传及普及。辉格党人用这个词来嘲笑前总统范布伦以及他的其盟友安德鲁·杰克逊，比如，他们声称杰克逊发明这个词是为了掩盖他自己拼错的“all correct”，批评范布伦的批评者们人还用“out of kash”和“orful katastrophe”等侮辱性词汇来攻击他。

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”这个词可能是1840年选举年的真正赢家，但它还是花了一段时间才成为“美国最伟大的单词”，这是作家艾伦·梅特卡夫在他2010年出版的关于“OK”的书中授予这个词的其这一个头衔。梅特卡夫表示，19世纪的一些顶级作家包括马克·吐温都尽量不使用“OK”。直到1918年，唯一一位拥有博士学历的美国总统伍德罗·威尔逊使用了“OK”的变体，这个词才稍微得到人们的认可，才使其在文学领域的使用上得到认可。（在2018年和2019年，“OK”还被添加到两个官方拼字字典，进一步为人们所接受。）

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:
下面这张图部分由谷歌的书籍词频统计器绘制了“OK”一词的光辉成长历程绘制，它记录了500年来图书的年度单词使用情况“OK”在书籍中的年度使用情况。它不包括口语中“OK”的使用频率，甚至没有覆盖所有出现在书面中的“OK”，但借以审视这个词的流行程度，它仍是一个有趣的角度：从这个词在20世纪末的流行程度来看，其使用率飙升。

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").

“OK”这个词的成功很大程度上要归功于它的简洁性和灵活性，在线词源词典指出，“它满足了人们在文件或账单等文件上快速写批文的需求。”，此外“OK”这个词还不断演变并填补了其他词汇的意义缺口，比如给予许可、表达身份或确认安全、呼吁采取行动或改变话题，它甚至还可以用来暗示平庸或失望。

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.

《波士顿先驱晨报》可能是第一家印刷“OK”的报纸，而且报纸上“OK”的意思被解释为“完全正确”，但这仍不可能排除“OK”这个词的许多其他来源。例如，伍德罗·威尔逊认为“OK”的拼写应该是 被拼成“okeh”，因为他认为这个词来自乔克托语中的“okeh”，意思是“就是这样”。这种解释长期存在，但由于缺乏证据，人们已经渐渐不相信这种说法。

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"). 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.

其他一些理论也认为“OK”不仅仅来源于美式英语，这个词也可能来自苏格兰语中的“och aye”（意思是“确实如此”）、希腊语的“ola kala”（意思是“一切都好”）、芬兰语的“oikea”（意思是“正确”）。令情况更为复杂的是，现在有些人将“OK”拼写成“okay”，这是该词一个较新的变体。然而，即使是在缩略语阵营中，也有人认为“OK”来自源于战地报告中“zero killed”（零伤亡）的缩写。

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." 

牛津大学出版社认为“OK”与西非的曼丁哥语之间可能有潜在的联系，并称这种说法是“第二种至少有一定可信度的理论”，但也补充道，“可能很难找到与之相关的历史证据。”

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.

就像美国的许多文化一样，“OK”这个词可能只是世界各地的一些概念和音节的合成，慢慢地一代一代向后传。不管是谁创造了“OK”这个词，如今它已广泛地在其他语言中被广泛被用作外来词，就像美国国家公共广播电台所说的“美国乐观进取无所不能的哲学”那样，这个词它为人们提供了一个精辟的语言包。由于“OK”在全球的影响力如此之大，发展得如此广泛，所以我们可能永远无法找到它的最初起源。

大家平时都会在什么场合用“OK”这个词呢？快来评论区留言吧~

本文为百度翻译原创内容

翻译：张兰兰 （北语）

 编辑：Caroline

文章来源：MNN