The Origin of “OK”.

This may come off as a pretty dull topic, though the bulk of us who use this term on a frequent basis probably don’t know where “OK” came from. Hah.

It just came up as a pretty random thought, so I decided to look it up since I’ve nothing better to do anyways. Did it gravitate from another language towards English? How did 2 alphabets become a word as such?

I’m not into Etymology LOLOLOL so don’t expect much. What I found from simple Google searches and a few articles was that “OK” is more likely to have originated from the English language itself, rather than general speculations of it being from various foreign phrases. These include the Greek ola kala (‘it is good’), Choctaw Indian oke/okeh (‘it is so’), Scottish och aye (‘oh yes’), and so on.

What’s amusing is that “OK” was initially an abbreviation of “oll korrect”, a deliberately misspelled “all correct”. This was for use in supporting the U.S presidential reelection candidate, Martin Van Buren, who went by the nickname “Old Kinderhook”.

HUR.

Who knew this would be kinda interesting. (sorry I’m weird)

So yeah, Old Kinderhook’s supporters formed O.K Clubs and stuff, and eventually O.K came into use as an actual word.

Okay?