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Okay, Okay – It’s All Okay!

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Last Friday, March 23rd, arguably marked the 179th anniversary of the origination of the word “okay,” okay?  Okay, just how do we know this?

Well, people called “lexicographers” and, more specifically, “etymologists,” tell us these things.

And although there really is no single definitive version as to how the word – or its abbreviation, which by most accounts actually preceded the full term – originated, the basic story is generally agreed upon.

Although numerous possibilities have been debated (e.g., French “aux Cayes” in relation to Puerto Rican rum coming through a port in Haiti; American shipbuilders’ marking for “outer keel”; Greek “ola kala”; Scottish “oye kye”; railway freight agent Obediah Kelley’s initials found on cargo shipped by trains; the Choctaw “oke” or “okeh,” which President Wilson reportedly adopted as the “proper” spelling of the Anglicized version; West African slaves’ coded vernacular for “it will be all good”; etc.), there remains one particular version that has come to be most readily accepted.

On March 23rd of 1839, the editor of the Boston Morning Post, Charles Gordon Green, deemed it “humorous” to truncate the Dutch term “orl korrect” into “o.k.” as a way of disparaging the spelling abilities – or lack thereof – of his fellow journalists who tended to resort to abbreviations in lieu of spelling out words.  Green took literary umbrage with such a practice and sought to poke fun at those who desecrated the English language in this way.

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But that would have probably been the end of the attention that “o.k.” would have ever received had it not been for the “timing is everything” adage; the following year of 1840 was an election year and thus replete with political fodder and, as fate would have it, journalistic “plays” on terminology.

The incumbent president, Martin van Buren, was a native of Kinderhook, New York, and came to be known as “Old Kinderhook” (OK).  Further, van Buren’s supporters subsequently formed a group that came to be known as the “Old Kinderhook (again: OK) Club” and its members were identified as “OK” guys.

As is often true with the evolutionary development of words, the term “OK” began to gradually command a wider expanse of loose interpretation; supporters of the “OK” candidate were soon denoted as “OK” guys as well, regardless of any affiliation with the “OK Club” itself.  Such a reference continued to expand across the country, with its interpretation likewise encompassing an ever-widening understanding of meaning to the point where anyone who was a supporter of the “OK” candidate was, logically enough, therefore an “OK” (i.e., “right”) person himself.

It is interesting to note that, despite the ultimate defeat of van Buren by William Henry Harrison, the term assumed a life of its own and continually increased in popularity to the point where it is one of the most versatile.  The advent of the telegraph in the 1840’s proved to be a catalyst in facilitating the expanded usage of “ok” as the universal abbreviation for anything positive, and even its myriad applications: “okay” is usually thought of as an adjective but it can also be used as a noun, adverb, or interjection showing only an emotional response with no grammatical “value” added to the sentence.  

And, as they say, the rest is etymological history, okay?  You okay with that?



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