What do those initials mean?

**Grae** · 21st August 11, 05:08 PM

Deledted

**Downunder Kilt** · 21st August 11, 05:13 PM

Totally agree Grae, but on this forum and referring to kilts as the previous poster was, I just nominated those two. I also always refer to the Queen as Her Majesty.

**Mike_Oettle** · 22nd August 11, 01:11 PM

Quite right, Mike. The Queen is always Her Majesty, not HRH. She was last HRH The Princess Elizabeth when she went to Kenya in 1952.

As for the debate on the word okay, the article Tobus refers to is suspect in my eyes because it shows bias in favour of a theory that has been debunked. I quote: “A more likely explanation is that the term originated as an abbreviation of orl korrekt . . .”
It is also dismissive of the West African theory of origin because of its insistence on recorded evidence of usage: “Unfortunately, historical evidence enabling the origin of this expression to be finally and firmly established may be hard to unearth.”
I grant that it would probably be hard to find written references to it, but it would be foolish to ignore the evidence provided by the expression’s occurrence in West African languages (in forms that are most unlikely to originate from the US) and in Jamaican dialect.
Regards,
Mike

**Grae** · 22nd August 11, 04:07 PM

Deledted

**Mike_Oettle** · 23rd August 11, 10:49 AM

Thinking a bit further after my posting of yesterday, I felt I ought to mention that the “debunked” theory I mentioned is one that desperately seeks to find a non-African derivation for okay.
I have been familiar since childhood with the story that a semi-literate packer would write “orl krekt” when he had finished a job. And I have also long known the use of OK in Martin van Buren’s re-election campaign.
But they are inadequate explanations of a clearly more deeply rooted usage.
Regards,
Mke