OK began as a joke, and not a very good one. In 1839 Boston newspapers had a fad for abbreviating phrases that were themselves misspelled on purpose, the way a country bumpkin might write them, and on 23 March the Boston Morning Post printed “o.k.”, for “oll korrect”. Nearly all its cousins have vanished. This one was rescued by an election: in 1840 supporters of Martin Van Buren, who came from Kinderhook, New York, and was called Old Kinderhook, formed O.K. Clubs, and the letters picked up a second meaning just when they needed one. Then everyone forgot the joke and kept the word. The linguist Allen Walker Read had to spend the 1960s going through old newspapers to find out where it came from. It is often called the most widely understood word on earth, and it stands for two spelling mistakes.