Where did the saying my word come from

Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

Millions of people all over the world use the word OK. In fact, some people say the word is used more often than any other word in the world. OK means all right or acceptable. It expresses agreement or approval. You might ask your brother, «Is it okay if I borrow your car?” Or if someone asks you to do something, you might say, “Okay, I will.” Still, language experts do not agree about where the word came from.

Some people say it came from the Native American Indian tribe known as the Choctaw. The Choctaw word okeh means the same as the American word okay. Experts say early explorers in the American West spoke the Choctaw language in the nineteenth century. The language spread across the country.

But many people dispute this. Language expert Allen Walker Read wrote about the word OK in reports published in the nineteen sixties. He said the word began being used in the eighteen thirties. It was a short way of writing a different spelling of the words “all correct.” Some foreign-born people wrote “all correct” as “o-l-l k-o-r-r-e-c-t,” and used the letters O.K. Other people say a railroad worker named Obadiah Kelly invented the word long ago. They said he put the first letters of his names — O and K — on each object people gave him to send on the train.

Still others say a political organization invented the word. The organization supported Martin Van Buren for president in eighteen forty. They called their group, the O.K. Club. The letters were taken from the name of the town where Martin Van Buren was born — Old Kinderhook, New York.

Not everyone agrees with this explanation, either. But experts do agree that the word is purely American. And it has spread to almost every country on Earth.

Then there is the expression A-OK. This means everything is fine. A-OK is a space-age expression. It was used in nineteen sixty-one during the flight of astronaut Alan Shepard. He was the first American to be launched into space. His flight ended when his spacecraft landed in the ocean, as planned. Shepard reported: «Everything is A-OK.”

However, some experts say the expression did not begin with the space age. One story says it was first used during the early days of the telephone to tell an operator that a message had been received.

There are also funny ways to say okay. Some people say okey-dokey or okey-doke. These expressions were first used in the nineteen thirties. Today, a character on the American television series, “The Simpsons,” says it another way. He says okely-dokely.

This program was written by Shelley Gollust. I’m Faith Lapidus. You can find more WORDS AND THEIR STORIES at our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com.

Откуда появилось выражение ОК?

А сейчас, специальная программа по изучению английского языка радио «Голос Америки» — «Слова и их истории происхождения».

Миллионы людей по всему миру пользуются словом ОК. На самом деле, некоторые люди говорят, что это слово используется чаще, чем любое другое в мире. ОК означает, что все хорошо или приемлемо. Оно выражает согласие или одобрение. Вы можете спросить своего брата «Будет окей, если я возьму твою машину?» Или если кто-то попросит Вас сделать что-то, Вы можете сказать «Окей, я сделаю». Тем не менее, лингвисты не могут прийти к согласию по поводу того, откуда произошло это слово.

Некоторые говорят, что оно пришло из родного языка племени американских индейцев, известных как Чоктау. У Чоктау слово okeh означало то же, что современное американское слово окей. Эксперты утверждают, что ранние исследователи Запада Америки говорили на языке чоктау в 19 веке. Этот язык распространился по стране.

Но многие люди оспаривают это. Лингвист Аллен Уокер Рид пишет о слове ОК в докладах, публиковавшихся в 1960-е. Он писал, что это слово начало использоваться в 1830-е годы. Это был способ сокращения на письме слов «все правильно». Некоторые иностранцы писали «все правильно» как «о-с-е п-р-а-в-и-л-ь-н-о» и использовали буквы О.К. Другие утверждают, что железнодорожный рабочий по имени Обадайя Келли изобрел это слово давным-давно. Говорят, он помещал свои инициалы — О и К — на всех вещах, которые люди передавали ему для отправки поездом.

Другие исследователи говорят, что это слово изобретено политической организацией. Эта организация поддерживала в 1840 году на президентских выборах Мартина Ван Бюрена. Они называли свой группу «Клуб О.К.» Эти буквы были взяты из названия города, где родился Мартин Ван Бюрен – Олд Киндерхук, штат Нью-Йорк.

Не все согласны и с этим объяснением. Но эксперты соглашаются, что это слово – чисто американское. И что оно распространилось практически во все страны на Земле.

Есть также выражение «А-ОК». Оно означает, что все отлично. А-ОК – выражение из эпохи освоения космоса. Оно было использовано в 1961 во время полета астронавта Алана Шепарда. Он был первым американцем, отправленным в космос. Его полет окончился, когда его космическое судно приземлилось в океане, как было запланировано. Шепард доложил «Все А-ОК».

Однако некоторые эксперты утверждают, что это выражение появилось не в век освоения космоса. По одной из версий оно впервые использовалось на раннем этапе телефонизации, чтобы сообщать оператору, что сообщение было получено.

Есть также забавные способы произнесения слова окей. Некоторые люди говорят «оки-доки» или «оке-доке». Эти выражения впервые были использованы в 1930-е. Сегодня персонаж одного из американских телесериалов «Симпсоны» произносит его иначе. Он говорит «окели-докели».

Эта программа была написана Шелли Голлуст. С вами была Фейт Лапидус. Вы можете найти больше слов и историй их происхождения на сайте voaspecialenglish.com.

BaKlol asks: Where did the word fuck come from?

In its various incarnations, the F-word can be a noun, verb, adjective, and even an infix. The Swiss Army Knife of the English language, this word has been adding spice to our conversations for centuries, even if our forbears were loathe to write it down. So where did it come from?

First, to dispel a widely touted myth- you’ll often read the origin of one of the most useful words in the English language is an acronym based on either “Fornication Under Command/Consent of the King” (purportedly the King trying to increase birth rates or alternatively restricting the act to put a halt to the spread of disease) or “[booked] For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” (for those being arrested for such). However, beyond there being zero evidence of either of these (or any other acronymic origin of the F-word), it’s worth pointing out that prior to the mid-20th century, while abbreviations were prevalent in text, pronouncing them as words was not something people did. This is actually an extremely modern phenomenon. In fact, according to linguist David Wilton,

There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is “colinderies” or “colinda”, an acronym for the Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year.

Combined with the lack of evidence supporting such an origin, we can safely dismiss origin stories like these.

Moving on from there, the first documented instance of some version of the F-word appears in a name- that of John le Fucker in 1278. The problem with this one is the original record of the name has been lost, so we have only a reference to it, rather than any context. It’s been speculated given the lack of others with this surname around this time, this may have been a typo of sorts, with, for example, “Tucker” being meant. It’s also been suggested it was a variant of Fulcher, meaning soldier. And even if it was correctly spelled, again, we have no context to what was meant.

Whatever is going on with le Fucker, about a decade later in 1286 there is an individual with the surname Fuckebegger, recorded as one of King Edward I’s servants who managed his horses. As to what Fuckebegger’s first name was, we’ll leave you to discern as we can’t really tell from the image of the document. As with le Fucker, it’s not clear from this name what the “fucke” part was referring to,  with the leading hypothesis being a “striker” of some sort. Or, if how we would use it today… poor guy was desperate apparently.

Picking up steam, in 1290 in Ipswich we have not one, but two Fuckers- one Simon Fukkebotere and Willm’i Smalfuk. Unfortunately for the amusement of our inner 12 year old selves, Simon having a last name pronounced “Fuck Butt…er” was probably just referring to striking/churning of butter.  Or, we suppose, he could have enjoyed churning that butter with his appendage, rather than using a churn dash- we’re not here to judge, you do you Simon- just given his customers probably wouldn’t have wanted to buy his butter if he was churning it with Señor Willy, most linguists go with the “striking/churning” origin. Similarly, Mr. Smalfuk, probably wasn’t a little Fuck, speculated to perhaps be referring to small fukke sails.

Moving on, we have one Roger Fuckebythenavele. The record of poor Roger was uncovered by Medieval History professor Dr. Paul Booth in 2015. At the time, he was researching an entirely unrelated thing when he came across a December 8, 1310 court record from Chester England in which Mr. Fuckebythenavele had that name applied to him thrice, getting rid of the possibility of any typos or the like. Of course, even here it can’t be definitively said the “Fuck” party meant as we’d think of it. But given the rest of the name, it certainly seems possible. As Dr. Booth states, “This surname is presumably a nickname. I suggest it could either mean an actual attempt at copulation by an inexperienced youth, later reported by a rejected girlfriend, or an equivalent of the word ‘dimwit’ i.e. a man who might think that that was the correct way to go about it.”

Either way, let’s all pause and appreciate the fact that all that will ever be remembered of poor Roger was that he maybe was an idiot or just really, really bad at sex…

And incidentally, what makes this one even more humorous is that around the 17th century, “to Roger” came to mean “to have sex” or “to penetrate”, from a slang for “penis” at the time.  Meaning if you combine the two slang terms across centuries, he was “Penis Fuckebythenavele”.

This also perhaps gives a new perspective on the “Jolly Roger” pirate flag name, though its origin isn’t definitively known.

Anyway- so that’s a lot of speculation. When did the word we all know and love today more definitively come to be? The first documented explicit use of the word fuck appears in a poem by Scottish poet and one time friar, William Dunbar, who wrote around 1503 in his Ane Brash of Wowing, “Yit be his feiris he wald haue fukkit”; or in context and translated:

He embraced tight, he kissed and groped,
As with the feeling he was overcome.
It be his manner he would have fucked [fukkit];
You break my heart, my lovely one!

In yet another example around this time, this one encrypted, the unknown author of the poem Flen flyys accused the friars of Ely of getting down and dirty with the ladies, writing sometime in the late 15th century, “Non sunt in cœli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. …Fratres cum knyvys goth about and txxkxzv nfookt xxzxkt.”

After the key to the cypher is applied, this results in a poem that is a mix of Latin and English, and the pertinent word being “fuccant”. Notably here the author is Latinizing the then English word “fucc”, which was common at the time when the person didn’t know the Latin equivalent of the English word, or if one didn’t seem to exist. Translating fully to English, the passage is:

The Carmelite Brothers sail in a boat by Eli
They are not in heaven since they fuccant the wives of Eli.
All became drenched, for they had no steersman,
Brothers with knives go about and swive men’s wives.

This early documented account also hints at how fuck became a swearword in the first place given that “swive”, literally meaning “swivel” but figuratively meaning “sex”, was also censored in the passage. In essence, fuck was a taboo word simply because it directly referred to sex.

That said, not everyone so censored themselves with the f-bomb. Fast-forwarding to 1528, an unknown person wrote in the margins of a copy of Cicero’s De Officiis, (On Duties– more or less a moral guide), “O D fuckin Abbot”. It is generally thought the “d” here stood for “damn” or “damned” and was a curse word too far to the individual who wrote this.

Given the context here, it’s not clear whether said individual was referring to the fact that the Abbot was perhaps having sex with women, and thus damned, or whether he was using it sort of like, “damned fuckin’ Abbot man, he’s the worst…”

Whatever the case, just 7 years later Sir David Lyndsay wrote in his Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, “Bischops … may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit”, giving us the first known instance of the common spelling of the four letter version of the word today.

So this all brings us to where the word came from. Given the timing and location of these first known definitive instances, the two leading hypotheses are- first, that it probably derived from one of the many flavors of the German “fuk” or “fukkon”. For example, the German “ficken” meaning, “to make quick movements to and fro”. This line of words, in turn, is speculated to come from the Proto-Indo-European *pewg meaning “to strike/hit”.

Somewhat similarly, the other leading hypothesis is that, given the term seems to have come from around Northern England or Scotland, whose language would be influenced by Viking invasions, the word may have Old Norse origins. Those advocating for this hypothesis point to the Norwegian “fukka”, meaning to “copulate”, or the Swedish “focka” to “copulate, strike, push”, which in turn may have derived from an Old Norse version of the words, which may have birthed the English “fuck”.

Whatever the case, the word would soon find its way into John Florio’s 1598 Italian-English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes, such as defining a “fottitrice” as a “woman fucker, swiver, etc.” and seems to have been pretty ubiquitous at this point.

That said, an interesting note on this one is by the late 18th century the word almost completely disappeared from pretty much every prominent English dictionary until around the middle of the 20th century when, in 1965, The Penguin Dictionary decided they didn’t give a fuck, and so gave its readers “fuck”.

Of course, despite this moratorium on the word in print during this rather lengthy period, it seems to have still been commonly used in speech. For example, it is noted by John Brophy in his 1930 Songs of Slang of the British Soldier, the use of “fuck”

became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express this emotion was to omit this word. Thus if a sergeant said, ‘Get your fucking rifles!’ it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said ‘Get your rifles!’ there was an immediate implication of urgency and danger.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• How the Tradition of Saying “Pardon My French” After Saying Swear Words Started
• What is a Tarnation?
• Why are Women Called Sluts, Dames, and Broads?
• Does Sex Before An Athletic Event Really Hinder Performance?
• Why Police Officers are Sometimes Called “Pigs” and Why “Poindexter” is Slang for “Nerd”

Bonus Facts:

You might at this point be wondering where various phrases that include the F-bomb came from.  We’ll start with “Flying Fuck”. The first known instance of this appears in Thomas Rowlandson’s early 19th century poem New Feats of Horsemanship. which also helpfully included an illustration of a man and a woman having the historic version of car sex. In the poem, he writes:

Well mounted on a mettled steed
Famed for his strength as well as speed
Corinna and her favorite buck
Are pleas’d to have a flying fuck.

While o’er the downs the courser strains,
With fiery eyes and loosened reins,
Around his neck her arms she flings,
Behind her buttocks move like springs.
While Jack keeps time to every motion,
And pours in love’s delicious potion.

As for “not giving a fuck”, we have the earliest documented instance of this in a 1790 poem by George Tucker, in which it states, “‘God-your books!’ the testy father said, ‘I’d not give a fuck for all you’ve read’…”

The next known instance of this basic sentiment didn’t pop up until just under a century later, in 1879, in a pantomime titled Harlequin Prince Cherrytop and the Good Fairy Fairfuck. The general story here is of a prince by the name of Cherrytop, who ends up a slave to the evil Demon of Masturbation. In to save the day is the Good Fairy Fairfuck and the Princess Shovituppa. In this work, which would be social media gold if properly performed today, appears the following line- “For all your threats I don’t care a fuck. I’ll never leave my princely darling duck.”

As for the sense of screwing someone out of something, we have an 1866 affidavit in which it states a man by the name of “Mr. Baker” “would be fucked out of his money by Mr. Brown.” Interestingly on this one, the notary who recorded this sentence states, “Before putting down the word as used by the witness, I requested him to reflect upon the language he attributed to Mr. Baker, and not to impute to him an outrage upon all that was decent.”

As for someone telling another to “go fuck themselves”, an early documented account of this can be found thanks to one Mary Hamilton in 1836 being charged with obscene language, after calling a group of women on the streets “bloody whores” and telling them to “go and fuck themselves.”

Moving on from there, thanks to Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, we know the first known case of “fucking bitch” was written in an 1857 story written by an abolitionist where he writes of a slave holder beating one of his slaves. Said woman then cries out, “O Lord!” In response, the slave holder tells her, “Hush you fucking bitch, will you take the name of the Lord in vain on the Sabbath day?”

Finally, the crowd favorite, “motherfucker” was first written down in the transcript of an 1889 Texas murder trial, in which it was alleged the person murdered had exclaimed to the person who then allegedly murdered him, “God damned mother-fucking, bastardly son-of-a-bitch.”

Expand for Further References

Comments and reviews: 10

English has borrowed so many words from other languages throughout its history that nearly half of its vocabulary comes directly from other languages
Vietnamese: Thats cute
(Our vocabulary consists of about 70-80% Chinese but written in Latin characters. Because China ruled us for more than a thousand years, our writing system was heavily influenced by Chinese, until the 17th century, when Europeans came here to promote Christianity, they need a different writing system so that the job can be done more easily. So they started writing Vietnamese in Latin, and now, Latin is the national alphabet in Vietnam. But though the words are written in Latin, they still resembles Chinese. You can easily see the similarities between our vocabulary and the Chinese pinyin, which is Chinese written in Latin)

PaszerDye
English will continue to acquire more new words, but I’m almost certain that it won’t be changing any more, unlike with the transition from Old English to Middle, Middle to Modern, and the Great Vowel Shift. Languages change because new ways of talking slowly seep their way into habit while the old ways are forgotten. But since the internet constantly reminds us how English sounds and so much of the world we live in present requires us to know it, such as law, technology, and entertainment, Modern English as we know it has taken root, and will likely remain the same for a very long time. It would take a global upheaval to upturn English and cause a new language to take its place.

bla
Where do new words come from?
From americans.
I have never seen a nation with more words invented per year than the american nation. And I’m not saying it like it’s a good thing. Inventing stuff is recommended and a reputable thing, but hacking words just so you can seem cooler, or — worse — to avoid copyright infringement is never a good thing. Actually, copyrighting words is never a good thing, because if this goes on mankind will eventually be forbidden to use any words at all once all words in the dictionary have been copyrighted / trademarked. Which leads to tyrany, which is what successful american corporations are aiming for anyway. Sad, really.

MC
Japanese has such a funny way of transliterating English loanwords into the many Japanese scripts, and when we transliterate them back into our Latin alphabet, dragon becomes doragon and software probably becomes sofotawaru.

MC
Memes in 2010: The girl in the back was murdered by the girl in the front. Share this picture to 5 people in the next 5 minutes or she will murder you too.
Memes in 2020: _lIkE tHiS pIcTuRe To InStAnTlY dIe_

Minna
I read wrong, I thought it said som kind of mixture between where do new nerds come from and where do [the] word nerd come from. Not sure what it says about me that I happily pressed it anyway

kids
If you would have asked me before I watched this video, I would have said they come from Dictionopolis. One who has read the book Phantom Tollbooth, he/she would know about it

Jacobius
The word clue is a variation of the word clew which was yarn used so people could find their way out of mazes.
Yh I googled it so you dont have to.

u8f7
The best part is that since autological describes words that describe themselves, autological also describes itself. Autological is autological

Shudhesh
And in the year 3017 linguists attempt to trace the origins of an enigmatic word known only from ancient twitter texts called covfefe.

One of the most common questions an atheist may try to pose to a Christian is, “where did God come from?” In other words, who created God? Or when did God begin?

The question itself is actually misleading because of God’s eternal nature. God didn’t spontaneously appear; he’s always been there. When a Christian tends to establish God’s eternal nature, the atheist may follow-up with a different question, “but doesn’t everything have to be created to exist? So how can God exist if he wasn’t created?”

Again, that question can run into a number of problems. First, if something supposedly created God, then who created that being who created God? The series of beings creating the next being would go on ad infinitem. Which, of course, would be impossible.

No, just as stated in Aristotelian philosophy, we need an unmoved mover to logically stop this ad infinitem series of one creator continually being created. We need God.

This article will endeavor to discuss the origins of the word God, answer the question of who created God or where he came from, cover God’s omnipotence and omniscience, and how we can know God is really there.

What Does the Word «God» Mean?

The origin of the word god is a bit enigmatic. Our English version of the word comes from a Greek word meaning “to pour,” but may also have been influenced by a mix of other cultures and languages, as explained by the Online Etymology Dictionary. However, of course, the concept of God existed long before then.

In Hebrew, there are various names for our God, but in terms of a false deity, we see the word elohyim used in the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3) about having no other gods before the one true God. The word tends to mean rulers, judges, or divine ones.

Other names for God we see in the Old and New Testament are Jehovah/Yahweh (Genesis 2:8) — the existing one — Adonai (Genesis 15:2) — Lord, Master, among others, listed here by Blue Letter Bible.

What/Who Is God?

God is the Creator of the Universe (Genesis 1:1). Through him and by him, all things are made (Romans 11:36). He sustains every living thing. Every living thing is finite and contingent upon his existence. Because of his infinite nature, he is not reliant on anything for his existence.

To answer the question posed above, nothing created God. Nothing had to. If something always existed (eternal) then nothing can create it.

This is part of the reason why atheists may try to argue that the universe always existed, because then it wouldn’t need a Creator. Something eternal isn’t contingent. Of course, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as explained here by Live Science, shows the universe has a limited amount of energy and is therefore finite.

And therefore, it needed a Creator.

God is also our Father as well as Creator. He didn’t simply create everything, sit back, and let the world tick on its own, as a deist perspective might suggest. Instead, he made himself part of the narrative. 

We, his creation, are his children. We can see verses about God’s fatherhood throughout the Old and New Testament. God has compassion for his children (Psalm 103:13) and those who honor him. He cares for all creation and values us greatly (Matthew 6:26). We come to know God the Father through our relationship with Jesus (John 14:6), and our Father is everlasting (Isaiah 9:6)

Where Did God Come From?

So if God is everlasting, where did he come from?

The question is contradictory. God does not change, he does not move, and he didn’t come from somewhere (Hebrews 13:8). He always was, is, and is to come.

For more verses about God, click here.

What Was God Doing before Creation?

This may prompt us to wonder what God was doing before Creation. After all, Creation started at a set point in time, and God, being eternal, is outside of time. So what did God do before He made the world?

As this article from Ken Ham points out, this question also misunderstands that when God created the Universe, he also created time. Time needs space and matter to exist, and neither existed until God created them. “Before creation” technically is a misnomer because God exists in eternity and isn’t bound by the constraints of a timeline. Time didn’t exist until God declared it to exist.

Still, we shouldn’t assume God was doing nothing, as stated in this article by Don Stewart. He had an eternal plan (John 17:24) before Creation. Also, we do have to keep in mind that God wasn’t alone. God is the Trinity, three persons in one. God didn’t need Creation to fill a loneliness in his heart.

It gets a little confusing, but as humans, we have finite minds, attempting to comprehend an infinite God.

What Does It Mean That God Is Omnipotent and Omniscient?

We have two other difficult concepts to understand about God.

First: He’s all powerful (Omnipotent, Job 42:2)

Second: He’s all knowing (Omniscient)

These two play into his eternal nature because if he wasn’t either, he would be finite. And if he’s finite, he’s dependent on something. And if God is dependent on something, that means we need to worship something greater than him.

Lucky for us, God is both of those things, and therefore not finite in his power or wisdom. Diving further into either of those would take entire articles and books.

What Makes the Christian God Different Than Other Gods?

So if God created the world, how do we know he’s any different than the gods of other religions? Those groups claim their god also created, and some of those gods appear to be all powerful or all knowing.

Here’s how we know our God is distinctive.

First, he wants a personal relationship with his creation. No other god is willing to come down in the form of man, suffer a horrendous death, for the sake of having a relationship with their creation. You do not see that in other religions.

Second, the religious texts for our God are scientifically, historically, and prophetically more accurate than the texts of any other religion. Although you can’t use a text as definitive proof of someone’s existence, it certainly bolsters the possibility. For an in-depth analysis of this, check out Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

Third, God is not dependent on his creation. Other religions (both monotheistic and polytheistic) run into a couple of theological issues. If the god is one and only one, then the god creates out of boredom or loneliness. That would make the god dependent on his creation. If there are many gods, then there is no one true powerful being, and therefore, they are finite in power. However, if God is one, but with three persons within the one (the Trinity) then God creates as an act of love, not necessity, and maintains His omnipotence.

How Can We Know God Is Really There?

We can see God in creation. The irreducible complexity of all creation points to intelligent design. The beauty and practicality of all creation shows God cares for those he creates and appreciates our beauty.

On a logical standpoint, we have to consider how the universe came into existence in the first place. Because of the second law of thermodynamics, the universe is finite. That means something infinite had to create it. And based on the mathematical patterns and complexity we see in creation, it had to be something all-powerful, personal, and eternal.

All of creation points to a Creator (Psalm 19:1-4)

So we can ask where did God come from, or who created God? The answer is that God has always been there, and no one created him.

But he did create us. We can see his fingerprints on everything. Creation proves God’s infinite nature, his compassionate spirit, and his power and knowledge. Better than any other god presented by any other religion, our Father wants a personal relationship with his creation.

Photo credit: Unsplash/Greg Rakozy