Re: Word usage in group versus out of group.

John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>
> > I remember one iteration of that on sci.lang, where someone eventually
> > came up with cites from 1840's US papers to show that it came from the
> > presidential campaign of James van Buren (I think), whose nickname was
> > Old Kinderhook. Has that been shown to be false?
>
> The Old Kinderhook campaign definitely gave the fad for "O.K." national
> publicity, as the Democratic Party temporarily renamed itself the
> "O.K. club".  But the usage of "O.K." in Boston newspapers had appeared
> several years before.
>
I have here two more possible sources, Native American ones!
One is the name of the chief (dunno which tribe) Old Keokuk,
who signed peace treaties with his initials. The other's a
word _okeh_, meaning "let it be so" (dunno which language).


--Pablo Flores