WASHINGTON, March 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S.
Census Bureau:
COINING A PHRASE
Profile America — Thursday, March 23rd. One of the
most distinctive and near universal American colloquialisms — the
affirmation "OK" — appeared in public for the first time on this
date in 1839. There have been claims that "OK" derives from
languages as diverse as Greek and Choctaw, and that it appeared in
earlier American documents. But it was first published in a Boston
Morning Post story with a brief definition. While "OK" took off
around the country, and eventually the world with variants in some
two dozen languages, time KO'd the Boston Morning Post. That
paper folded in 1956 after 125 years of publication. Today in the
U.S., there are nearly 7,400 daily, weekly or other newspaper
publishers still doing OK in this digital age. You can find more
facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at
www.census.gov.
Sources:
First OK/accessed 1/10/2017:
http://famousdaily.com/history/first-published-use-of-term-ok.html
Etymology/accessed 1/10/2017:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/what-is-the-origin-of-the-word-ok
Global spread/accessed 1/10/2017:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12503686
Other languages/accessed 1/10/2017:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK#International_usage
Newspaper publishing/County Business Patterns/NAICS 511110:
https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/BP/2014/00A1//naics~511110
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and
Promotion of the U.S. Census Bureau. Statistics and accounts drawn
from cited non-Census sources are employed for illustrative or
narrative purposes, and are not attested to by the U.S. Census
Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments,
ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for
"Audio" in the "Library" pull-down menu).
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-census-bureau-daily-feature-for-march-23-coining-a-phrase-300424466.html
SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau