English language

In 1934, Webster's second edition printed 'dord', a Word that never existed. Defined as meaning density, it began as an editor's slip 'D or d' (D or d abbreviates density), misread as one word. The ghost entry sat in the Dictionary five years before anyone caught it: a 'ghost word'.

"OK" began as a newspaper joke in 1839 Boston. Educated young people then had a fad of deliberately misspelling abbreviations, so "all correct" became "oll korrect," shortened to "o.k." It spread nationwide the next year as short for "Old Kinderhook," the nickname of candidate Martin Van Buren.

Many European surnames originated from 'son of [father's name].' English -son (Johnson, Jackson), Celtic Mc/Mac (McDonald, MacArthur) and O' (O'Brien), Spanish -ez (Rodríguez, González), and Slavic -vić (Ibrahimović, Đoković) all trace back to a father's name that became hereditary.