The History of OK

by Jasper Scott

"Coca-cola" is the second most understood phrase on the planet.

"OK" is the first.

From China to Italy, Egypt to Mexico, people know what it means to say, “OK.”  But like most anything ubiquitous and multi-cultural, the acronym’s origin is awash with legend and skepticism.  Indeed, linguists the world over are partial to any one of a number of theories, because, theories are all we have about the etymology of “OK.”

The Wolof language from North Africa introduced words like “jive” and “banana” and some scholars credit Wolof and its word “waw-kay” as the origin on “OK.”  It is documented, through plantation diaries as far back as 1816, that slaves said “Oh ki,” to mean, “yes, indeed,” and the word “kay” alone dates back to 1776 among African American speech.

But this is not widely agreed upon.

The history books read that "O.K." appeared as an abbreviation for oll korrect (an ironic, conscious misspelling of "all correct") in The Boston Morning Post in 1839, and was reinterpreted as "Old Kinderhook" for supporters of Martin Van Buren in the 1840 United States presidential election.

Long before Dictionary of American English first cited “O.K.” in 1839, the expression, and variants of its spelling and pronunciation can be found in Choctaw Native American literature.

Beginning in 1825, two Presbyterian missionaries to the Choctaw, Cyrus Bryington and Alfred Wright (Wright being a full-blooded Choctaw) published a series of Choctaw literature aimed at closing the gap between the Choctaw and the white man.  These books functioned mainly as spelling books and translations, translations of passages from the bible including the Book of Genesis and The Acts of the Apostles.  In true colonial fashion, the first bi-lingual literature was resultant from a overarching objective of assimilation by means of religious conversion.

And in these texts, we find what could be the first appearance of “OK.”  In Choctaw, the expression “hoke” or “oke” is thought to function much like “OK” or “okay” does today.  None of Bryington and Wright’s documents give a definitive definition of the word.  In fact, the word appears not once in biblical translations but quite often in forwards and afterwards by the Choctaw translators.  It also appears as “yakoke” or “yoka” or “kakoke.”  

The Choctaw phrase “Yak oke” means “Thank you,” but could be spoken quickly to express happiness and slowly to express sorrow.

In 1952 Thomas Pyles wrote about the first appearance of American frontiersman, during The War of 1812, being a launching point of white men.  Indeed a few accounts of frontiersmen, trappers who traded with Native Americans, using variants of the phrase "okay" when trading with white men to approve a deal or, perhaps more accurately translated, “it is so.”

President Woodrow Wilson subscribed to this theory.

And yet President Andrew Jackson was initially credited with the coining the phrase in 1790 – Wilson agreed, saying he took the word from the Choctaw—but Jackson’s origination was debunked in 1940, attributed to a misread “O.R.”

Still, some theories claim that the "O.K." acronym originated during the American Civil War to mean "Zero Killed."

Some say it was Greek sailors, using the word "Ola Kala."

And some attribute it to the French "au quai."

But I don't believe any of that shit.

The problem with etymology is that it bases word origins solely on print, be it newspapers or literature.  It rarely takes into account the verbal usage of a word, which, as it is today with slang, is almost always where a word first inserts itself into the language.

I'm tempted to believe it originated with either African slaves or the Choctaw Native Americans.  It seems silly to think that this universally understood word was birthed in a Boston newspaper less than 200 years ago.

But maybe there's a bit of truth to each of these theories.  Maybe the phrase, now universal, was always universal, multicultural, and transnational.