The OK Story

OKay

I came across a book, OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, that got me thinking about this common word that doesn't get much thought. Is okay (AKA OK or O.K.) America's greatest word?  Yes, according to author Allan Metcalf, English professor and executive secretary of the American Dialect Society.

This is the kind of post that normally appears on my Why Name It That? website, but OK is such a common colloquial English way of denoting approval, assent, or acknowledgment, that I'm giving it some attention here.

"Okay" has spread as a loanword to other languages.

It has shades of meanings and is used as several parts of speech: As an adjective, "It's okay to sit here" means "acceptable" but "Their food is just okay" means "mediocre" rather than being "good."

People use it as an adverb ("She sings okay.")

"Okay, I'll leave now" makes it an interjection meaning compliance and "Okay, I like that option" indicates "agreement."

You can use it was a verb, as in "The office okayed my travel expenses."

These two letters (I'm not a fan of the "O.K." version because I don't see it as an abbreviation.) are very versatile.

The OK or ring gesture is a common hand sign. It even has an online Unicode symbol (U+1F44C) and is a commonly used emoticon online 👌 . Connecting the thumb and index finger into a circle, and holding the other fingers straight or relaxed away from the palm indicates something is okay.

Divers use the sign to say that you are okay or to ask another person if they are okay.

Take note that in other contexts or cultures, this same gesture has different meanings or connotations that are not simply linguistic, including ones that are negative, offensive, financial, numerical, devotional. For example, in France the "OK" gesture bears both positive and negative connotations, and in parts of the Arab world, this sign represents the evil eye and is used as a curse.

The origin is not definitive. One version is that at a Chicago bakery named O. Kendall and Sons they stamped Army biscuits with the company initials OK, or maybe it was a Boston baker named Otto Kimmel who did that on his vanilla cookies. But why attach the meanings to it beyond it being a kind of logo?

I also found that it might be d from the Choctaw word "okeh" -which means "it is true." That sounds more sensical, though I found no path for its entry into English.

There is an origin that attaches "OK" to the Boston Morning Post back in 1839 where as an editor's joke it was used as an abbreviation for a misspelled version of the phrase "all correct." Huh? That makes no sense to me.

I prefer a New Jersey diary entry of William Richardson in 1815. He is writing about a journey from from Boston to New Orleans and writes: "Arrived at Princeton (NJ), a handsome little village, 15 miles from N Brunswick, ok at Trenton, where we dined at 1 P.M." 

We assume he meant that he is giving his Trenton meal an "all right" review. But it is unlikely that Richardson invented the ok term as a personal short form, so where did he get it from and why did it spread?

OK had usefulness as a short form in 19th century telegraph messages with their abbreviations that resemble our own Tweets.

We also sometimes use "A-OK" to mean a stronger form of okay. The term seem to have originated with the space program.

There is also "okie-dokie," a slang term that also means okay that was popularized in the Our Gang (The Little Rascals) films.

And if OK isn't enough of a shortening of okay, you will also see the single "K" in text messages.

How Is Your Sanskrit?

Sanskrit in Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a language of ancient India (3,500 years old) and is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, the predominant language of most works of Hindu philosophy as well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism.

It was the lingua franca of ancient and medieval India.In the early 1st millennium CE, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, Sanskrit migrated to Southeast Asia, parts of East Asia and Central Asia. It became the language of high culture and of the ruling elites.

Sanskrit words have been and still are the secret language of Yoga.

You probably know some Sanskrit: Karma and Nirvana are ancient Sanskrit words. But there are other Sanskrit words that are very good at summing up large principles of guiding one's life.

Here is a quick primer on some Sanskrit:

• Santosha = contentment and finding a feeling of content no matter what your circumstances may be. 
• Ananda = bliss, that state of utter joy and fulfillment.
• Mantra is another fairly common word, especially if you have seriously studied mediation. It is defined as a mind instrument - not a prayer as we normally think of that word, but a sacred phrase that can be repeated, even "hummed" during meditation 
• Satya = truth, which includes truth-telling, practicing positive moral and also finding your own personal truth as well. While being honest with others is important, being honest with yourself allows you to realize your purpose. 
• Saucha = cleanliness, physically and in spirit and emotions that are toxic, such as fear, jealousy, and anger.  
• Ahimsa – non-violence both physically and mentally. 
• Upeksha means staying grounded which is the way to an ultimate state of peace 
• Prajna = wisdom, but not so much the learned wisdom of schooling or experience, but from spiritual wisdom

You'll find more at mindbodygreen.com  and yogajournal.com

A Dictionary of Akkadian

Akkadian was the dominant language of the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia. It was the lingua franca in the Ancient Near East for several centuries. It was gradually replaced by Aramaic. It faded into oblivion once Alexander the Great Hellenized (Greekified) the region and in modern times we had no dictionary to decode it.

But, after 90 years of work, scholars at the University of Chicago finally published in 2011 a 21-volume dictionary of Akkadian.

Unspoken for 2,000 years, Akkadian was preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions until scholars deciphered it.

Gilgamesh was a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, a major hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late second millennium BC.

Composed of many stories, the connected narrative that is the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh was composed by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni, probably during the Middle Babylonian Period (c. 1600 – c. 1155 BC). The source material is much older.

In the epic, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who befriends the wildman Enkidu, and together, they go on adventures.

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature. As a half-god and half-man, his isolation from both worlds turns him into a cruel tyrant over the citizens of Uruk. To impress them forever he orders a great wall to be built, driving his people to exhaustion and despair so that they cry to the Sun God for help.

The Sun God's response is to to send to Earth another kind of man, Enkidu, to live among the animals and learn kindness from them. He falls in love with Shamhat, a singer from the temple, and he follows her back to Uruk. There, Enkidu, the “uncivilized” beast from the forest, shows the evil Gilgamesh through friendship what it means to be human.

Old and Middle English

The sole surviving medieval manuscript of Beowulf (British Library)

I used to teach a unit about the history of the English language. It sounds like a very academic (i.e. "boring") topic, but I think it turned out to be be more interesting than most of my students expected.

It all starts with invasions. Three Germanic tribes invade Britain during the 5th century AD. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany.

The people of Britain spoke a Celtic language and the invaders pushed them west and north into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Which tribe dominated? Well, the Angles who came from Angleland were successful enough to give us - through some mispronunciations  of Angleland - "Englaland" later England. Their language was called "Englisc."  And most of us have heard the term Anglo-Saxon.  The Jutes, who settled in Southern Britain, didn't fare as well.

When I was in college, a professor played us recordings of Old English. I expected it to sound like Shakespeare or Chaucer, but it sounded like a foreign language. You could hear hints of German, Norse an, as I was taught, some Latin and Celtic.

Old English is the English of Beowulf, and it sounds like another language. To me it sounded more like German, with some Latin, Norse, and Celtic influences.

Listen to this brief excerpt:


Beowulf might sound like something J.R.R. Tolkien made up for his elves to speak in The Lord of the Rings.

So, we had speakers of “Old English,” “Middle English,” and “Modern English.” Shakespeare, much to my freshmen English students' disbelief, was speaking Modern English.

A few, but not that many, modern English words come from Old English. Some of them are commonly used ones like our articles, pronouns and prepositions.


That Middle English period (1100-1500) got a kickstart from William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), in 1066 when he invaded and conquered England.

These "Normans" spoke a form of French that became the language of the Royal Court, the ruling class and business classes. there was certainly a class division based on language. The lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French.

But, by the 14th century, English became dominant again, though many French words had been added. Enter Middle English.

This was the English of the poet Chaucer. A bit more understandable to us today that Old English, but still difficult - as any student who had to study Chaucer's Canterbury Tales will tell you.

Take a listen to his Prologue:


Around 1500, there is a distinct change in pronunciation (actually called "The Great Vowel Shift") with vowels being pronounced shorter. The British are much more global and connecting with other languages. Add in the Renaissance of classical learning, and the invention of printing and we get a much more common language. Books being cheaper meant more people learned to read and that led to standardization of English spelling and grammar.

The dialect of London, home of the publishing houses, was the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published.

Though the Early Modern English of Shakespeare still sounds odd to students, the big change that comes after this to late Modern English (1800+) is mostly vocabulary.

For that, we can point to the Industrial Revolution and technology which created many new words (and still does today) and at that time the British Empire was at its height globally. English was spoken around the world and also took on many words from around the world.

Here is a brief History of the English Language in 10 Animated Minutes - from the Open University

What Would Freud Say About That?

We have all said and heard someone say something that is considered to be a "Freudian slip." We attach that phrase to what are often embarrassing slips of the tongue. Though sometimes we just accidentally use the wrong word, in the Freudian cases we interpret them to be more revealing of some unconscious thought.

In the cartoon example above "another" becomes "your mother" - mothers and fathers being big in Freud's view of psychology. In another example, a man saying that he was unhappy and felt a "need to change my wife" when he meant to say "a need to change my life," it would be easy to psychoanalyze his slip as meaning much more than a linguistic error.

Freud wrote:

"In the same way that psycho-analysis makes use of dream interpretation, it also profits by the study of the numerous little slips and mistakes which people make—symptomatic actions, as they are called [...] I have pointed out that these phenomena are not accidental, that they require more than physiological explanations, that they have a meaning and can be interpreted, and that one is justified in inferring from them the presence of restrained or repressed impulses and intentions. [Freud, An Autobiographical Study (1925)]

Freud believed that it was our unconscious mind that unlocked our behaviors and, like dreams, slips of the tongue revealed those hidden thoughts. he never called them "Freudian slips" but referred to these mistakes as Fehlleistungen meaning "faulty actions", "faulty functions" or "misperformances" in German.

Freud's English translator used the term parapraxes  and also the phrase "symptomatic action," both of which are still used today. (more on the word origins)

A Freudian slip of the tongue is an error that is popularly believed to carry hidden meanings. But Freud’s original use of the term ‘parapraxis’ actually included a wider range of common mistakes in behavior. He cataloged and analyzed errors in reading and writing, forgetting someone’s name, mislaying an object, or failing to perform a particular action.

Not all of Freud's theories are still accepted. there are many psychologists and linguists that believe that many cases of Freudian slips are really more indicators of the way language is formed in the brain rather than unconscious thoughts slipping out.

Even in his own time, an Austrian linguist, Rudolf Meringer, had also collected verbal mistakes, but concluded that in most cases they occurred from mixing up letters, not the full words.

In order to produce speech, the brain uses the semantic, lexical and phonological networks and speech requires via the interaction of all three networks. When these interactions malfunction, you get a slip or error.

There are many examples of Freudian slips, but the most famous ones usually come from the most famous people.

Then Vice-President, George H.W Bush gave a speech on live television in 1988 and said “We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex… uh… setbacks” The audience did think there was something else going on in his mind.

UK journalist Jim Naughtie on the BBC Radio accidentally pronounced then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s surname as cunt.

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to President Bush, said at a White House dinner party: “As I was telling my husb — as I was telling President Bush...”

Pope Francis was delivering a sermon at the Vatican in 2014, when he accidentally said cazzo instead of caso. Unfortunately, the latter means "example" while the former translates as "fuck."

Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech about education and said “Our national interest ought to be to encourage the breast - the best - and brightest.”

So, are all these examples evidence of the unconscious speaking out? Ot are they examples of a linguistic misfire?  I tend to side on believing that Freudian slips do not reveal our innermost or darkest secrets, but rather a way in which our brain sometimes mis-processes language. But some of these examples are hard not to consider as being a bit more than just simple mistakes.

Jersey and Other Dialects

So, I stumble upon this pretty cool map that is supposed to show every American dialect. This is based on pronunciation patterns. The site is really a hobby of its owner, so I can't validate all the information is 100% linguistically accurate, but it is interesting.

There are 8 major English dialect areas in North America listed on the map with the first 6 beginning on the eastern seaboard and proceeding west, reflecting western settlement patterns. There are also subdialects and a Dialect Description Chart additional features not shown on the map are provided for distinguishing the dialects.

If you click on the map, you can listen to an audio or video sample (mostly YouTube)of speech of a native - more specifically, someone who was raised there, though not necessarily born there, and whose dialect clearly represents that place.

So, of course, I had to click on where my own dialect was formed - northern New Jersey. That's NY Yankees/Giants/Jets/Rangers territory, which is different from south Jersey or the western Jersey that would root for the Phillies/Eagles/Flyers.

One of the two clips they provide for NJ is of Danny DeVito from Asbury Park, NJ. He is south Jersey or Jersey Shore - not to ever be confused with the reality show version of that great area of the state which bears little resemblance to what you see on the screen. 

How wonderful for NJ's image that the clip selected is Danny (who I like a lot) introducing his own version of of the liqueur Limoncello, and telling a bit about his hangover appearance on The View.

Word of the Summer

Merriam-Webster selected its hot and buzzy "Word of the Summer." The odd part is that it's not really a word.

Their choice is "refudiate."

Sarah Palin got creative with "refute" and "repudiate" and did a blend when she was on some news show and then later on her Twitter page. This led to a lot of searches on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary during the summer for both of those words and the non-existent "refudiate."

When Palin was hit with criticisms about her goof, she pointed out that Shakespeare often created new words.

To save you a few clicks...
refute = to prove something wrong or deny its truth or accuracy
repudiate = to refuse any connection with something or reject it as untrue or unjust

So, is refudiate a Palindrone? Don't laugh. It is.

Cleaving

I always liked the word "cleave." It's what I used to call a contronym. Now, I find that it is referred to as an auto-antonym (sometimes spelled autantonym), or contranym. Either way, it's a word with a homograph (a word of the same spelling) that is also an antonym (a word with the opposite meaning). Basically, it's a word with multiple meanings, one of which is defined as the reverse of one of its other meanings.

Not to get too buried in language here, but true homographs are distinct words with different etymology (origins) which happen to have the same form. "Cleave" meaning "to separate" is from the Old English clēofen, while cleave meaning the opposite "to adhere" is from Old English cleofian, which was pronounced differently.


And all that is just a lead-in to a new book called Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell. She's the blogger who cooked her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and got her own book and movie deal out of it.

After that success, her marriage is threatened by an insane love affair, and she decides to leave town and do what so many others have done in that situation - learn to be a butcher.

She finds a butcher shop (Fleischer’s) and learns how to break down a side of beef and "French" a rack of ribs (something Ms. Childs probably never did).

Then, banked by her previous success (or her publisher), she travels to find fellow butchers from South America to Europe to Africa.

What are the connections between mastering the art of hacking at meat and mastering your heart?

The book's subtitle is "A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession." And cleave is a contronym, so...

It has gotten some harsh reviews harsh reviews and puzzled some readers - which, of course, makes me want to check out the book.

Her What Could Happen blog is at  juliepowell.blogspot.com and her official site is at http://juliepowellbooks.com