See here for the UK-to-US WotY post.
Time for the 2023 US-to-UK Word of the Year. Before people complain that this word has been in British English too long for it to count as a word of 2023, let me remind you of the criteria for SbaCL WotYs:
- Good candidates for SbaCL WotY are expressions that have lived a good life on one side of the Atlantic but for some reason have made a splash on the other side of the Atlantic this year.
- Words coined this year are not really in the running. If they moved from one place to another that quickly, then it's hard to say that they're really "Americanisms" or "Britishisms". They're probably just "internetisms". The one situation in which I could see a newly minted word working as a transatlantic WotY would be if the word/expression referenced something very American/British but was nevertheless taken on in the other country.
- When I say word of the year, I more technically mean lexical item of the year, which is to say, there can be spaces in nominations.
OK!
Though it has appeared in BrE since at least the late 19th century (originating in AmE earlier in that century), OK took a while to make its way into everyday speech in the UK. (Click on images to enlarge them.) Here's its trajectory in books (via Google Books Ngram Viewer).
 |
| Dailymail.co.uk headline. Not linking to them because they don't need the traffic |
[I]n American English, right conveys the speaker's knowing stance and, in certain environments, the speaker's claim of primary knowledge. In contrast, in British English, right registers provided information as previously unknown, informative, and relevant to the current speaker's ongoing project.
[...]
[S]ome UK usages of right—such as registering of potentially consequential information and projecting a transition—are quite similar to US okay in comparable positions [...]. This suggests a possibility that, in US English, okay took over some of the right usages and/or, in UK English, right took over some of the okay usages."
Their research was inspired by this interaction between BrE-speaking "AB" and AmE speaker "GA":
So, essentially, the British use of right in that context leads GA to think that AB is confirming (rather than acknowledging receipt of) the information. If AB had said OK, then GA would have understood it as acknowledgement rather than confirmation.
Even though the researchers note differences in usage between BrE and AmE okay (though keep in mind that their research is about right), it seems like a fitting US-to-UK WotY because (in whichever usages), it's used more than ever in the UK. Here it is in the British section of the News on the Web corpus, where it shows OK and okay climbing in the last couple of years.
Posts
comment catcher
ReplyDeleteIs there any suggestion that an emphatic version of OK ("okay!") might be taking over the, what, acknowledgement space of the UK "brilliant"—?
ReplyDeleteNo, I've not seen that. "Brilliant' is still around, but somewhat displaced by 'amazing' and 'awesome', depending on one's age.
DeleteThis article examines a variety of "okay" usages produced by speakers, including some "emphatic" instances:
DeleteBeach, W.A. (2020). Using prosodically marked “Okays” to display epistemic stances and incongruous actions. Journal of Pragmatics, 169, 151-164.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.08.019
Seems OK in the sense of "if that's all you've got it will have to do".
ReplyDeleteAs a child of the fifties in the UK, my earliest experience with etymology was reading the label on a sauce bottle.
ReplyDeleteThere was always a bottle of OK Sauce on the dining table and it had an explanation of the name OK. The manufacturer admitted that there was no definitive origin but the meaning most popular at the time was an abbreviation of Orl Korrect, as used by George Washington.
These days I'm in the Ned Flanders camp and prefer to use okily dokily.
Sadly the "OK Sauce" label no longer has that information. From memory other explanations were from a US president known as "Old Kinterhooks" and the word "okeh" from the Choctaw language.
DeleteThat's a shame. It's small things like that can inspire pre-school youngsters to pay attention to what they read. I liked the detail on the HP Sauce bottle too. The first item on politics I ever read.
DeleteThe hero who discovered the origin of OK was Allen Walker Read, not Allan Metcalf! Metcalf wrote a very good popular book, which (as the linked Merriam-Webster page says) was based on Read's work, done way back in the 1960s in a legendary feat of searching without computers; Read's articles remain behind the paywall of the stingy American Speech. I'm sure Metcalf did good work filling in parts of the story and writing it for the public, but Read was the giant whose shoulders he was standing on.
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right. I shall correct!
DeleteI have noticed that my teenagers have started using “noted” in certain contexts where I would use OK. Compared to OK, it seems to have a slight undertone of exasperation at the idiot imparting the information or requesting action, so it’s ideal for teens.
ReplyDeleteIf I try to comment using my google account I get this message "Unable to sign in to comment. Please check your browser configurations to allow sign-in. Learn more. You can still comment anonymously, or with name and URL."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if it's my settings or yours.
I had that trouble for a long time, until I realised I needed to enable 3rd-party cookies on Blogspot. Worked like a charm!
DeleteThanks. I'd just worked this out. The error message is misleading . It takes you to th Blogger user help page.
DeleteGranted OK is a US->UK import, but it is - as your your data shows - hardly new. It was part of everyday informal BrE usage when I was a small child - 70 years ago. As some have pointed out, there are perhaps slightly different shades of meaning between the continents, often conveyed by tone of voice.
ReplyDeleteYour GA/AB dialog(ue) doesn't ring true for me (BrE, lived in US and married to a USer). I (as AB) would probably respond 'Oh, did they?' if I hadn't known, or 'Yes, I know' if I had - or maybe 'OK, right, so let's wait and see what happens'.
But as always, informal usage varies a lot across the UK.
As Lynne already explained, a WOTY is NOT a new word but a word which had a major impact within the year in which it was the WOTY.
DeleteDo you think that "Person of the Year" should be limited to only those people whose ages are under a certain maximum? If not, then what is your reason for think that WOTY refers to how recent the word began to be used?
AmE speaker: "Right" in that kind of context would usually sound aggressive or sarcastic to me, not just like a simple acknowledgement.
ReplyDeleteAs a crotchety old Brit, I admit to feeling a wee bit patronised when a younger person says 'OK' in the middle of my explanation of something - it seems as if they are 'allowing' me that point, waiting to see if I really do know what I'm talking about! A simple 'yes' or 'I see' would work there. Or 'right', with a pleasant intonation.....
ReplyDeleteI am a crotchety old expat Brit, now a long time Canadian. I agree. It's like those obnoxious younger people who condescendingly say, "OK boomer". And I am old enough to regard said boomers as Johnny-come-latelies.
DeleteSomething that jumped out at me is that the Mail have used the (AmE?) "smart" instead of (BrE?) "clever" or more neutral "intelligent". My first thought as a Brit when hearing smart is nattily dressed, or my mothers opinion on any hair cut she approves of.
ReplyDeletehaha yeah was gonna point that out! they aren't too bright at the mail, are they.
DeleteArthur Conan Doyle certainly used 'smart' a few times in the 'intelligent' sense in his Sherlock Holmes novels
DeleteWhat about "ok-a-a-a-y", which is often used in AmE in response to an outrageous (or outrageously stupid) statement? Same in BrE?
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to feel that Americans and British people have a different definition of 'pastry'. I myself would not consider cake a pastry at all, but my Americans friends call it 'the quintessential pastry'.
ReplyDelete