They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Taints, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. UK Americans, or more colloquially, UK - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed UK on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao