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As a curious child, I’ve always wondered why do people say such phrases during certain events. In particular, I am very interested to know why do people use “Roger” when they speak over radio (in the army, police, aviation, etc). I grew up with these unanswered questions in my head.

But as time flies and many more things kept me excited and curious, these unanswered wonderings are left behind. Today as I was chatting with a friend on the way to meet a business partner, we discussed this. After a lot of combing the world wild web (yes, i say wild), I found pretty interesting facts:

Why do people say “Roger” over radio?

You see, back then when people still uses morse code to communicate, the indication of saying “O.K.” is by the signal dit-dah-dit in morse. Coincidentally, this sequence also represents the letter “R” in morse communication (do correct me if I’m wrong, though). During the war (and I believe still being used now), to make sure the other party understand spellings, we naturally use words beginning with the spelled letter. The most popular convention is the “Able, Baker, Charlie” convention, and for the letter R, it corresponds to “Roger”.

Let me quote from Phrases.org.uk:
From the Archives under Roger Wilco;
ROGER — “in the meaning of ‘Yes, O.K., I understand you — is voice code for the letter R. It is part of the ‘Able, Baker, Charlie’ code known and used by all radiophone operators in the services. From the earliest days of wireless communication, the Morse code letter R (dit-dah-dit) has been used to indicate ‘O.K. — understood.’ So ‘Roger’ was the logical voice-phone equivalent.” “Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins” by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, New York, 1977, 1988).

So, now we know.

Why does magician always say “Abracadabra” while doing their feat?

This question pops in my mind again, when I was watching Harry Potter (I believe movie 4 & 5) marathon, where they featured the spell “Adva Kedavra” that instantly kills the target. This phrase is ironically close to “Abracadabra” which we usually hear. As I am unable to contain my curiosity for long, I went and lookup for it. The finding is pretty amusing:

“Abracadabra” is said to come from 2 possible derivation:

First, from the Hebrew phrase “Abreg Ad Habra” which means “Strike dead with thy lightning”, and second is from the Aramaic phrase “Avrah Kedabra” which means “I will create as I speak”. (Source).

The second phrase makes sense for most magician’s feat these days, but I love the first one, which coincide with what Lord Voldermort is doing.

Why do people say O.K., or Okay?

This has remained in my longest wonder, and I never did bother to find out. There’s a few possible source for this:

-It was used in the 1830s in a Boston newspaper as a joke. There was an humoristic fashion to reduce a phrase to initials, and sometimes the abbreviations were misspelled to add more humor. Someone used O.K. for “all correct” (oll korrect).

-The previous explanation is connected with my favorite one, that says that during the Civil War, when batallions returned from the front, the first man in line carried a sign with the number of soldiers killed in action in that group. So the signs stated “9 Killed”, “5 killed” and so on. If the number was zero, they stated “O K”, a perfect mark.

-The last one (somehow connected too), tells that during the glorious days of the telegraph, there was a man named Oscar Kent, who never commited mistakes in his transmissions. Then, if the telegraph message was signed “O.K.” all was correct.

Additionally, in German the expression “Ohne Korrekten” means “without correction” and in Greek “Ola Kala” means “everything’s fine”.

So, now we know!

posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 22:46 in Entertainment, Guides.