4 ms·
I wonder if OK is a linguistic example of William Gibson's "steam-engine-time". Given the multiple plausible etymologies, is it possible that OK emerged simulta
by Fwirt 6y ago
I wonder if OK is a linguistic example of William Gibson's "steam-engine-time". Given the multiple plausible etymologies, is it possible that OK emerged simultaneously in many places at once, and the crossover between the different occurences cemented it in modern language?
- DC-3 6y agoIt's not impossible, obviously, but while it was natural for steam-engines to appear when they did, there is no good reason to expect an essentially arbitrary word to be synthesised many times nearly simultaneously. A weaker version of your hypothesis, whereby the word was synthesised once but reinforced by similar phrases or folk etymologies (leading to the current confusion) is much more plausible, however.
- dvh 6y agoIf two different or dissimilar word appeared, we would not have this discussion.
- zuminator 6y agoSo you're essentially saying they're...all correct?