An English professor and etymologist (one who investigates the origin and historical development of words), in 1941 Read set out to help some researcher friends working on the Dictionary of American English to discover the origin of the word “O.K.”
At the time it was thought to have originated as an Indian word, but after years of research for the earliest reference he found it started at a Boston newspaper in 1838 which liked to use playful spellings and abbreviations; “O.K.”, according to the paper, meant “oll korrect” (or “all correct”.) (He also disproved the Martin Van Buren “Old Kinderhook” legend; Van Buren used that slogan in his re-election campaign well after the 1838 newspaper citation.)
Read was a “liberal” grammarian: “The great danger in the use of dictionaries is that they may come to be thought of as straitjackets that prevent the swinging, free enjoyment of the mother tongue,” he once wrote. That brought him considerable criticism, with other linguists scoffing Read was “a wrong-side-up pedant” and “standardless sociologist of language.” He replied that “Anyone who tries to defend ‘the treasure of our tongue’ should recognize that a valuable part of the treasure is the colloquial element, localisms, and slang.” He died in New York on October 16. He was 96.
Author’s Note: I always knew that “okay” was in incorrect spelling, and researching this entry proved it.