7/26/2023 0 Comments Keep it copacetic![]() ![]() Lukins, noted for her idiosyncratic speech. In the book the word is used twice by a character named Mrs. The first written occurrence of the word thus far detected (as copasetic) is in A Man for the Ages (New York, 1919), a novel about the young Abraham Lincoln in rural Illinois by the journalist and fiction writer Irving Bacheller (1859-1950), born in northern New York state. Note: Copacetic (with many variant spellings) is probably better known for competing theories of its origin than for any record of unconscious everyday use in American English. These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'copacetic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. 2023 No baby mama drama here: In a new interview, the model pregnant with Nick Cannon‘s latest child insisted things are nothing but copacetic between herself and the other women he’s had kids with, including ex-wife Mariah Carey. 2023 Manifesting the Mediterranean of the 1960s (and channelling the spirit of a bustling Moroccan Bazaar), the vibe is alight with cool DJ sets, creative cuisine, and copacetic dwellings. Jack Kelly, Forbes, Pretty much every Red Sox team that did not have Bobby Valentine as its manager was copacetic in the spring. Mike Postalakis, SPIN, Hopefully, everything is copacetic. ![]() Arkansas Online, 25 June 2021 Things were not always copacetic. Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 16 July 2021 Which seemed, at the time, copacetic. Charles Pulliam-moore, The Verge, Alone in their suite, Jake moves in to kiss Rachel, but he’s suddenly gripped by a suspicion that all might not be entirely copacetic. Recent Examples on the Web Martin’s assurances that everything is copacetic with House of the Dragon’s second season will likely come as a relief to some of the show’s fans. Anecdotal recollections of the word’s use, however, predate his lifetime. Another theory credits the coining of the word to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who used the word frequently and believed himself to be the coiner. Other theories trace copacetic to Creole coupèstique (“able to be coped with”), Italian cappo sotto (literally “head under,” figuratively “okay”), or Chinook jargon copacete (“everything’s all right”), but no evidence to substantiate any of these has been found. One theory is that the term is descended from Hebrew kol be sedher (or kol b’seder or chol b’seder), meaning “everything is in order.” That theory is problematic for a number of reasons, among them that in order for a Hebrew expression to have been adopted into English at that time it would have passed through Yiddish, and there is no evidence of the phrase in Yiddish dictionaries. Theories about the origin of copacetic abound, but the facts about the word’s history are scant: it appears to have arisen in African-American slang in the southern U.S., possibly as early as the 1880s, with earliest known evidence of it in print dating only to 1919. ![]()
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