OK
okay
American English
“The most recognized word on the planet was born as a joke in a Boston newspaper in 1839. Nobody has stopped arguing about it since.”
On March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post published the abbreviation 'o.k.' as a humorous shorthand for 'oll korrect,' a deliberate misspelling of 'all correct.' This was part of a short-lived craze in American newspapers for comical abbreviations: K.Y. for 'know yuse,' K.G. for 'know go.' Most of these died within weeks. OK did not.
What saved OK from obscurity was the 1840 presidential campaign. Martin Van Buren, the incumbent, was nicknamed 'Old Kinderhook' after his birthplace in New York. His supporters formed 'O.K. Clubs,' and the abbreviation gained a political second life. Van Buren lost the election, but the word won everything.
Etymologists have proposed dozens of alternative origins: the Choctaw word okeh ('it is so'), a Haitian port called Aux Cayes where the rum was good, a Finnish word oikea ('correct'), a German town of Ober-Kintzheim stamped on barrels. Allen Walker Read, a Columbia University linguist, spent decades in the 1960s demolishing each of these. The Boston Morning Post origin is the one that survived peer review.
OK spread across every language on earth in the 20th century. It is used in Japanese, Swahili, Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin. The word has no real translation because it doesn't need one. It crossed every border without a passport. Two letters. Universal.
Related Words
Today
OK is the most frequently spoken and written word in human communication. It means agreement, adequacy, permission, acknowledgment, and 'I heard you.' It does the work of a dozen words and asks for nothing in return. Linguists call it the most successful American export — above jazz, above jeans, above Hollywood.
Two letters from a joke no one was supposed to remember. The abbreviation fad of 1839 produced exactly one survivor, and it conquered the world.
Explore more words