每日一词:“O.K.”这个词是怎么来的？

编辑:给力英语新闻 更新:2018年3月24日 作者:纽约时报

It’s a shortcut used the world over — and even beyond, having been uttered at least once during a space mission.

全世界都在用这个简写，甚至出了地球也用过它——在一次太空任务中被说了不止一次。

On this day in 1839, The Boston Morning Post published “O.K.” for the first known time, using the abbreviation next to the words “all correct.” (It’s not written “okay,” The Times stylebook says.)

1839年的今天，《波士顿晨报》(The Boston Morning Post)上（就我们所知）首次出现了“O.K.”这个词，在“全部正确”(all correct)的旁边使用了这一简写。（根据时报自己的体例要求，不写作“okay”。）

There have been many theories about its origin, but the most likely is that O.K. was an abbreviation for the deliberately misspelled “orl korrect” (all correct), and the expression gained prominence in the mid-19th century.

关于它的来源众说纷纭，但最有可能的，就是“O.K.”是故意拼错了的“orl korrect”(all correct)的简写，这一表达在19世纪中叶迅速流行了起来。

Allen Walker Read, a longtime English professor at Columbia University, debunked some theories in the 1960s, including that the term had come from Andrew Jackson’s poor spelling, a Native American word or an Army biscuit.

长期在哥伦比亚大学执教的英文教授艾伦·沃克·里德(Allen Walker Read)对1960年代的几个说法做出了批驳，其中包括这一用法来自于安德鲁·杰克逊(Andrew Jackson)写的错别字，以及这是美国原住民的土话，或是一种军队饼干。

Today, O.K. is “an Americanism adopted by virtually every language, and one of the first words spoken on the moon,” the Times obituary of Mr. Read noted in 2002.

今天，“O.K.”是“基本每种语言都会使用的美国腔，并且是第一批在月球上说出来的词语之一”，时报在2002年里德的讣告里指出。

The professor didn’t “appreciate having ‘O.K.’ overshadow the hundreds of other etymologies he divined,” it continued. He also tracked early uses of Dixie, Podunk and the “almighty dollar.”

里德教授并不“欣赏O.K.这个词让其余数以百计在他眼里同样出色的词源相形见绌这一点”，讣告里说道。他还找到了Dixie（美国南部）、Podunk（无名小镇）及almighty dollar（万能的美元）这些用法的源头。

In the 1920s, Mr. Read hitchhiked through western Iowa hunting down the word blizzard.

在1920年代，里德通过搭车的方式，游遍了艾奥瓦州西部，找寻blizzard（暴风雪）这个词的起源。

“A man called Lightnin’ Ellis had first used the word for a snowstorm in 1870,” he learned. “Within 10 years, it had spread throughout the Midwest.”

“一位名叫‘闪电埃利斯’(Lightnin’ Ellis)的男子在1870年，第一次用这个词来形容暴风雪，”他了解到。“10年内，这个词就传遍了中西部。”

翻译：安妮