Having read “It’s 175, Okay?” (March 23), I deem it appropriate to cite the following anecdote from the life of President Woodrow Wilson. For the sake of convenience I quote the relevant text in full: “President Woodrow Wilson would sit down beside his green-shaded lamp and take up one paper after another — and so, work until the small hours. Approval was designated by ‘Okeh, W.W.’ on the margin of a paper. Someone asked why he did not use the ‘O.K.’ ‘Because it is wrong,’ Wilson said. He suggested that the inquirer look up ‘Okeh’ in a dictionary. He did, and discovered that it is a Choctaw word, meaning ‘It is so.’”
Therefore “It’s 175, okay?” is not O.K.
Justice (retd.) K. Narayana Kurup,
Kochi
I have been teaching all these years that “OK” is the abbreviation of Otto Krause — about the story of a quality inspector at Henry Ford with that name had been stamping after his inspection. Maybe it has something to do with “orl korrekt” or “ola kala,” but it is strange that Otto Krause doesn’t merit even a mention in the report.
Itty Varghese,
Kottayam
The report on the word “OK” made interesting reading. It will be useful to know its origin — an abbreviation of “Oll Korrect” for “All correct.” Initially used in the U.S. in the informal expression, especially in conversation, it became very popular over a period of time. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), the word OK is used by Tom.
Earlier, in 1840, during the presidential re-election campaign of Matin Van Buren, the word made the rounds as a slogan. It referred to the initials of his nick name Old Kinderhook, derived from his birthplace.
R. Soundararajan,
Nagapattinam
