Photo: OlegRi (Shutterstock)
“OK” is one of the most widely used words in the world. It’s also a really weird one. We don’t pronounce it like “ock,” as we probably should. Instead, we say the letters. OK. It’s a relatively recent word—it was first seen in print in 1839—but we can’t say for sure where it came from. Here are the main theories.
The abbreviation “o.k.” was used as a joke by Boston’s newspaper editors in the 1830s; it meant “all correct.” That’s short for “oll korrect,” (Get it?) That’s the first printed “o.k.” exactly as we use it now. But there are other possibilities.
Until the 1960s, Webster’s and other authoritative sources claimed “OK” came from the Choctaw “okeh” meaning “it is so.” Apparently, missionaries to the Choctaw started ended their writings with “okeh.”
But even earlier than that, in 1784, the word “kay” shows up in print in a transcription of a West African slave saying “enough” when being flogged: “Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe...”
Or maybe it came from Scottish people saying “och aye.”
Or it could have been from the Greek “óla kalá” or “all good.”
We probably will never know for sure, and that’s OK.
