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  3. Allan Metcalf s new book claims that the word "OK" is America’s greatest inv

Allan Metcalf s new book claims that the word "OK" is America’s greatest inv

游客2024-10-04  17
问题     Allan Metcalf s new book claims that the word "OK" is America’s greatest invention. This offers a pair of provocations. How can "OK" be an invention? On a certain day, a certain guy just dreamed up the expression that has become the most frequently spoken word on the planet? And even if it is an invention, can one little word really be greater than jazz, baseball, and the telephone? Is it better than The Simpsons?
    The answer to the first question, implausible as it sounds, is yes. In OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, Metcalf locates the first use of OK in an obscure corner of a Boston newspaper on March 23, 1839. As for the alleged greatness of the word, Metcalf s slim volume doesn’t entirely persuade you that OK is a more valuable invention than, say, electric light. But the fact that he even raises the question is intriguing. If it does nothing else, Metcalf makes you acutely aware of how universal and vital the word has become.
    True story: the world’s most popular word began as a joke. In the late 1830s, America’s newspapers had great enthusiasm for abbreviations—also, to judge by Metcalf s account, a sorry sense of humor. He devotes a chapter to trying to explain why readers of the Boston Morning Post might have been amused to see "o. k." used as a jokey abbreviation for "oll korrect," an intentional misspelling of "all correct." Apparently you had to be there. But the word soon got an enormous boost from Andrew Jackson—or his enemies, anyway. They circulated the rumor that the man of the people was barely literate and approved papers with the initials "O. K." for "oll korrect." It was a joke, Metcalf concludes, "but without it there’d be no OK."
    The word didn’t remain a joke for long. Telegraph operators began using it as a way to say "all clear." It became ubiquitous, turning up in all corners of the world, and beyond. Metcalf points out that OK was technically the first word spoken on the surface of the moon.
    When you pause to consider what a weird and wonderful little word OK is, the most remarkable thing isn’t that it’s so great or that it was invented but that it’s American. To foreigners in the 20th century, Metcalf writes, the word embodied "American simplicity, pragmatism, and optimism." To us today, the word sums up "a whole two-letter American philosophy of tolerance, even admiration for difference." [br] The passage is intended to
选项 A、review Metcalf s new book on "OK".
B、reveal the unknown facts about "OK".
C、convince us of the significance of "OK".
D、answer questions concerned about "OK".
答案 A
解析 本文一开始就提到了Metcalf的新书，然后作者在首段以提问的方式引出Metcalf对于OK的研究，但本文也不是一味地介绍Metcalf的书，其中还穿插着作者对书中内容的评价，因此，本文应该是对Metcalf的新书的评论，故应选A。B为强干扰项，本文虽然提到了一些有关OK鲜为人知的故事，但文章是围绕Metcalf的书来说的，且有评论，故B没有A具体、准确；最后一段提到了OK对美国人的意义，但并不足以概括全文内容，故排除C；虽然文章首段有几个问句，但这些问题是用于引起读者的兴趣，因此，焦点不在于那些问题本身，而在于接下来的Metcalf的新书的内容，故不选D。
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