Okay
OK is a term of approval or assent, sometimes written as okay.Originally it was short for any of several humorous misspellings of "all correct", including "Oll Korrect", "Orl Korrect", and "Ole Kurreck". This was part of the fads in the 1830s and 1840s of intentionally misspelling common phrases and referring to them by the resulting initials. In the presidential election of 1840, the term "OK" was further popularized by use as an slogan by the O.K. Club, New York boosters of Democratic president Martin Van Buren's 1840 re-election bid; it was an allusion to his nickname Old Kinderhook, from his birthplace Kinderhook, New York. Van Buren lost, but the word stuck. [1]
This explanation was first documented by Allen Walker Read in several articles in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964, and is the only one supported by the earliest evidence. The first recorded use of "OK" was in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, in the sentence "He...would have the 'contribution box', et ceteras, o.k.--all correct--and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward."
There have been many other proposed explanations. There is supposedly a Choctaw word "okeh" that means roughly the same thing, for instance, and Woodrow Wilson, among others, thought this to be the source of "OK". Even after A. W. Read's work, many argue that the case has not been proven decisively, or that perhaps similar-sounding words in other languages did solidify the acceptance of "OK" in American English. Others are skeptical, questioning how many Americans were, say, familiar enough with Choctaw for it to influence their use of English.
From the U.S. it spread to the rest of the world, first appearing in British writing in the 1860s. Spelled out in full in the 20th century, 'okay' has come to be in everyday use among English speakers, and borrowed by non-English speakers. Occasionally it is extended to okey dokey or even, thanks to Ned Flanders, okely dokely.
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