On March 23, 1839, Boston Morning Post editor Charles Gordon Greene was writing a satirical piece making fun of the Providence Journal. At the end of a throwaway paragraph, he stuck in an abbreviation: “o.k.” It stood for “oll korrect,” which was an intentionally misspelled version of “all correct.”

That joke became the most widely used expression in the English language.

Greene wasn’t being random. According to History.com, the late 1830s were in the grip of an abbreviation craze, especially among young, educated elites in Boston. The twist was that they deliberately misspelled words first, then abbreviated them. It was the 1800s version of texting slang, and apparently it was hilarious at the time.

Other abbreviations........

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