A Conversation for Legends of the Word 'OK'

British Army

Post 1

Rigger

My old history teacher was a bloke who loved useless information. One of the ones he said was that OK was British Army slang.

In the days of telegraphic messages, when the likelihood of getting long words correct was minimal, they tended to use abbreviations. If the British Army had a particularly successful day's fighting in Africa and none of the Tommies were killed, it was customary to telegraph back to HQ with the legend 0K - meaning 0 (zero) killed. And that's 0 the number, rather than O the letter.

Perhaps then if this is true, that were should really say Zero-K. But that would sound rubbish.


Key: Complain about this post

British Army

More Conversations for Legends of the Word 'OK'

Write an Entry

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."

Write an entry
Read more