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). 

 

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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

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