Allen Read
Allen Walker Read, etymologist, died on October 16th, aged 96

FOR much of his long career studying language Allen Read sought the origin of OK, perhaps the most useful expression of universal communication yet devised. You can use OK not simply to indicate agreement but, with appropriate facial expressions, shades of agreement, even disagreement. It is a vocabulary in itself. No wonder that OK has found its way into nearly every language in every country, and beyond. It was the fourth word, if you can call it that, heard on the moon, spoken by Buzz Aldrin. For etymologists, establishing the origin of OK became something of an obsession, equivalent to mathematicians' long quest for the proof to Fermat's last theorem.
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