Etymology of "OK"

Today, "OK" is probably one of the most universally known English words. But it originated in 1839 as a joke, mocking the semi-literate, who supposedly spelled "all correct" as "oll korrect". Basically, OK was the "Get a Brain! MORANS" of its day. (Via Robin Sloan)

• [Tavie]

  Here’s a book about OK.

• [Marja]

  P.S. to clarify – English vowel shifts bury the resemblance, but Hoad lists the following cognates for English “eke:”

  Old Saxon “okian”

  Old Norse “auka”

  Gothic “aukan”

  The au- is pronounced as o- and the final -n is just the infinitive ending. So we have three close parallels from three different branches of the language family.

• [Giant Mustache]

  Africa.

  Hard to believe such a “port out starboard home” publisher like Oxford would publish such “for unlawful carnal knowledge”-ing bull-”ship high in transit”.

• [wgmleslie]

  If you’ve ever watched World Rally, the Finnish co-drivers are always saying “oikea” (which is pronounced OI-keh). It means “correct”.

  Good link.

  That being said, I agree with Marja that it’s very difficult to be definitive about something like this.

  Ok?

• [bardfinn]

  I’m far more willing to give credence to the Chickasaw / Choctaw hokeh / okeh or Finnish oikea than to the Old English / Saxon / Norse / Goth “eke” / “okian” / “aukan” leading to late middle / elisabethean “eke”, since the Old English / Saxon utterance of interjection that played the same role as today’s “OK” was hwaet, which survives today in Cockney “wot” and an English use of “what”.

  Also “eke”, before the Great Vowel Shift, was pronounced like “Ay-ka” and afterwards like “eek-H”, and is verbish rather than interjectionish, and is usually used for states of existence that need improvement, rather than ones that are correct.

  The scary part: I know this without having to look it up. Language Nerdery FTW.

  • [Marja]

    True. A Common Germanic theory would require English to borrow the word from another Germanic language, some time after the Great Vowel Shift, preferably in North America, and preferably in the late 18th century, under circumstances which lend themselves to the change in usage. I’m not familiar with the later development of the cognates in Dutch, German, Swedish, etc. to say whether they are plausible sources.

• [SteveNZ]

  And of course the Scots have been saying “Och, aye” for centuries.

  Or is that just too obvious?

• [tcv]

  I just read Professor Metcalf’s book. I believe his (and Read’s) version of the origin but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not the full story. The original Boston writer could just as easily heard it on the street from someone else who had heard it from someone. It’s simply hard to know with 100% certainty.

  Good book.

• [Ultan]

  You beat me to it – I have long thought “och, aye” is the obvious source, but I had never seen it proposed as the source of “OK” by anyone else.

• [Marja]

  In addition, once we needed a word meaning “okay,” it could have shifted the usage of a word meaning something similar. Look at how the need for a word meaning “yes” has drawn in words which once meant different things, including former conjunctions.

• [RadioSilence]

  coincidentally i’m reading Bill Bryson’s Made In America (1994) and it had this to say about the origins of OK.

  “…The explanations for its etymology have been as inspired as they have been various. Among the theories: that it is short for only kissing, that the semi-literate Andrew Jackson wrote it on papers as an abbreviation for oll korrect (in fact he was not that ignorant), that it came from Orrin Kendal crackers, that it was an abbreviation for the Greek olla kalla (‘all good’), that it was from a prized brand of Haitian rum called Aux Cayes, that it was an early telegraphic abbreviation for open key, that it was from the Choctaw affirmative okeh, that it came from the indian chief Old Keokuk or from the nickname for Martin Van Buren, Old Kinderhook.

  Learned papers were written in defence of various contentions. The matter was discussed at conferences. By 1941, when Allen Walker Reed, a professor at Columbia University, began looking into the matter, OK was already the most widely understood Americanism in the world and the search for its origins was the etymological equivalent of the search for DNA. It took Read some twenty years of searching to nail the matter down, but thanks to his efforts we now know that OK first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post on 23 March 1839, as a jocular abbreviation for ‘Oll Korrect’. At the time there was a fashion for such concoctions – KY for ‘Know Use’, RTBS for ‘Remains To Be Seen’, KG for ‘Know Go’, WOOOFC for ‘ With One Of Our First Citizens’. In 1840 Martin Van Buren ran for President, the Democratic OK Club was formed to promote his election, and OK raced into general usage, where it has remained ever since.”

• [Anonymous]

  I guess it makes more sense in England, where “all” rhymes with “bowl.”

• [fx]

  In Canada, (in elementary school in the 80s, at least) we were taught that OK originated with French-Canadian longshoremen during the times of the colonial fur trade. When someone brought a pelt to load onto a ship, the foreman would look it over to make sure it was in good condition. If it was, he’d instruct this person to bring it “au quai” (French for “to the dock”). This was then shortened by English-speaking dock workers to “OK”.

  Of course now I realize that this particular folk etymology doesn’t have any more evidence for it than all the others in this thread…

• [brennan47]

  I thought that “OK” was the political catch phrase for “Old Kinderhook” – Martin Van Buren’s nickname – in his election for President. I have been telling my government students that story for years…yikes…

• [pato pal ur]

  Actually I’ve heard that there are several theories as to the actual etymology of OK, the one Maggie gives as being one of them. (What I’ve heard is that it was Pres. Andrew Jackson who wrote “oll korrect” on documents he was satisfied with and his staff started using “OK” as a secret way to mock him, but maybe this part is apocryphal.) The only this historians can agree upon is that OK is definitely of American origin, but beyond that, it’s disputed…

• [turgidnoodler]

  Agreed with the multiple etymologies. Wikipedia is pretty good on this:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay

• [dagfooyo]

  Hooray for cakografy!

• [Anonymous]

  “Oll Korrect” was like “fanboi” or “leet” in its day. It’s no more complicated than that, according to etymologists. Just an in-group misspelling that made it all the way to the top.

• [Nawel]

  Orson Scott Card, in “Heartfire”, uses the form “Oll Korrect”. One of the characters says it’s a joke about people too concerned about how the words are written…

• [Manooshi]

  Yeah, what about ‘okay’?

• [danimagoo]

  The Van Buren/Jackson contribution to OK is explained in the full article Maggie linked to.

• [Anonymous]

  OK

• [Anonymous]

  I heard a lot of theories for this word, including the abreviation of “all correct” or the “0 Killed” in wars… Is there more evidence this time for this explaination ?

• [mdh]

  I know this etymology, I’ve always considered OK as the as the true dawn of 1337.

• [Marja]

  I don’t buy it.

  My first concern is that English folk etymologies are full of acronyms and abbreviations, most of which are spurious. So it’s important to consider as many alternatives as possible instead of fixating on abbreviations and misspellings.

  My second concern is that there are other viable sources – Wikipedia notes the possibilities of borrowings from either Choctaw or Wolof, and I would add the possibility of inheritance from common Germanic. (English is full of multiple words from the same Germanic root, such as shirt/skirt, ship/skiff, etc. and modern English *eke* comes from a root meaning “to prosper,” which corresponds nicely with “okay.”)

• [takeshi]

  The “orl korrect ” etymology has been thoroughly debunked, as there are plenty of citations that predate it. Obviously, the OED has some trouble catching up, but this is primarily due to their western European bias.

  Many linguists believe the word derives from “okee,” from an obscure West African tongue.

  • [Anonymous]

    From what I’ve heard, it’s from their bias towards properly written sources. There are lots of records of slaves saying “okee” in America, which is what Oll Korrect is probably making fun of, but no earlier ones of anyone saying it as proper English.