Words: okay, n., v. and adj.

IT TOOK a while, but I got through to somebody at Cable & Wireless, and the Duchess of Windsor soon came to mind. In reply to my query about the iniquity of being charged the same rate for data and voice transmissions despite data's using less bandwidth, the firm's resident troglodyte began an ill-informed discourse whose every sentence ended "okay?"

One began to see why the Duchess, in one of her earlier incarnations, eschewed okay in a bid to raise her status. Okay (au quai or the Choctaw oke) was long disputed. It is now certain that it is an 1839 version of all correct (orl korrect) and became popular as a slogan the next year during the US presidential campaign of Martin Van Buren - nicknamed Old Kinderhook (where he was born).