What makes a language Object-Oriented?

Question

Since debate without meaningful terms is meaningless, I figured I would point at the elephant in the room and ask: What exactly makes a language \"object-oriented\"? I\'m no

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, the main view of what makes a language "Object Oriented" is supporting the idea of grouping data, and methods that work on that data, which is generally achieved through classes, modules, inheritance, polymorphism, etc.

See this discussion for an overview of what people think (thought?) Object-Orientation means.

As for the "archetypal" OO language - that is indeed Smalltalk, as Kristopher pointed out.