Okay

For other uses, see Okay (disambiguation).

"O.K." redirects here. For other uses, see OK (disambiguation).

"Okee" redirects here. For the community, see Okee, Wisconsin.

"Okay" (also spelled "OK," "O.K.") is a colloquial English word denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment. "Okay" has frequently turned up as a loanword in many other languages. As an adjective, "okay" means "adequate," "acceptable" ("this is okay to send out"), "mediocre" often in contrast to "good" ("the food was okay"); it also functions as an adverb in this sense. As an interjection, it can denote compliance ("Okay, I will do that"), or agreement ("Okay, that's good"). As a verb and noun it means "assent" ("The boss okayed the purchase," and, "The boss gave his okay to the purchase.") It can also be used with appropriate voice tone—such as sarcasm or a questioning tone—to show doubt or to seek confirmation, assent and approval ("Okaay?" or "Is that okay?").

"Okay" is generally thought to have originated in the late 1830s as a regional slang abbreviation for "Oll Korrect", as part of a fad for clever, humorous acronyms. It then achieved national prominence when it was adopted as part of a slogan in the 1840 presidential campaign of Martin van Buren, where it was additionally given the interpretation of "Old Kinderhook".

Etymology

The accepted etymology of "okay" is due to a major survey by Allen Walker Read of the early history of the word in a series of six articles in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964. He tracked the spread and evolution of the word in American newspapers and other written documents, and later the rest of the world. He also documented controversy surrounding okay and the history of its folk etymologies, both of which are intertwined with the history of the word itself.

A key observation is that, at the time of its first appearance in print, a broader fad existed in the United States of "comical misspellings" and of forming and employing acronyms and initialisms. These were apparently based on direct phonetic representation of (some) people's colloquial speech patterns. Examples at the time included K.Y. for "know yuse" ("no use") and N.C. for "'nuff ced." ("enough said," commonly written today as "nuff said") This fad falls within the historical context, before universal "free" public education in America, where the poorly educated lower-classes of society were often easy entertainment for those who found fun in their non-universal language, epitomized by colloquial words and home-taught or self-deduced phonetic spellings. Motivated by this context, Noah Webster's dictionaries were published in 1806, 1828 and 1840, which both nationalized language usage and highlighted non-universal language by its introduction of unique American spellings, such as program rather than programme.

The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 ... OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes." Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of okay was OW, "oll wright," and there was also KY, "know yuse," KG, "know go," and NS, "nuff said."

The general fad may have existed in spoken or informal written U.S. English for a decade or more before its appearance in newspapers. OK's original presentation as "all correct" was later varied with spellings such as "Oll Korrect" or even "Ole Kurreck." Deliberate word play was associated with the acronym fad and was a yet broader contemporary American fad.

The term appears to have achieved national prominence in 1840, when supporters of the American Democratic political party claimed during the 1840 United States presidential election that it stood for "Old Kinderhook," a nickname for a Democratic presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, a native of Kinderhook, NY who was Andrew Jackson's protege. "'Vote for OK' was snappier than using his Dutch name." In response, Whig opponents attributed OK, in the sense of "Oll Korrect," to Andrew Jackson's bad spelling. The country-wide publicity surrounding the election appears to have been a critical event in okay's history, widely and suddenly popularizing it across the United States.

Alternative etymologies

See also: List of proposed etymologies of OK

Read originally proposed an etymology of "okay" in "Old Kinderhook" in 1941. The evidence presented in that article was somewhat sparse, and the connection to "Oll Korrect" not properly elucidated. Various challenges to the etymology were present, e.g. Heflin's 1962 article. However, Read's landmark 1963-1964 papers silenced most of the skepticism. Read's etymology gained immediate acceptance, and is offered without reservation in most dictionaries.

A large number of other etymologies have occasionally been proposed. Most of them clearly fall into the category of folk etymology and are proposed based merely on apparent similarity between "okay" and one or another phrase in a foreign language with a similar meaning and sound. Some examples are

• A corruption from the speech of the large number of descendants of Scottish and Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish) immigrants to North America, of the common Scots phrase "och aye" ("oh yes").
• Derivation from the Lakota word "Hokaheh" (also anglicised as "Hoka Hey" and "Hoka Hay") which has many popular mistranslations but which is probably most accurately rendered as "Let's go!". (This is additionally unlikely in that contact with the Lakota people was not really established at the time that "okay" or "ok" was first noted.)
• The loan of the Greek phrase Όλα Καλά or Ola Kala, meaning "All Good."

Two other etymologies deserve additional mention:

1. Choctaw word okeh or hoke
2. Wolof and Bantu word waw-kay or the Mande (aka "Mandinke" or "Mandingo") phrase o ke

Neither one is generally accepted today in the scholarly community, but appear occasionally in scholarly sources published by non-linguists. They also fail to accord with the fact that all early references to the word spell it as an initialism ("O.K.", "OK" or the like); the phonetic spelling "okay" dates only to 1929.

The Choctaw etymology is noted primarily because the phonetic spelling "okeh" predated (in 1919) the common appearance of the spelling "okay". The spelling "okeh" was used by Woodrow Wilson on the assumption that it represented Choctaw okeh "it is so". However, the Online Etymology Dictionary notes that this theory "lacks historical documentation", and The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994) says that "[w]ithout concrete evidence of a prior and established English borrowing from Choctaw-Chickasaw", any "derivational claims" about a Choctaw etymology are as "gratuitous" as those of the Liberian Djabo "O-ke," the Mandingo "O ke," or the Ulster Scots "Ough, aye!"

The West African (Mande and/or Bantu) etymology has been championed by a few scholarly sources. The originator of this etymology was David Dalby, who first made the claim in the 1969 Hans Wolff Memorial Lecture. It was reprinted in various newspaper articles between 1969 and 1971. The claim was resurrected more recently by Pan-African Studies professor Joseph Holloway, who argued in the 1993 book The African Heritage of American English that various West African languages have discourse markers that are phonetically similar to "okay" and have meanings such as "yes indeed" or which serve to advance from one part of a narration to the next. Frederic Cassidy strongly challenged Dalby's claims, asserting that there is no actual documentary evidence that any of these African-language words had any causal link with the English word "okay". He further asserted that these claims of African origin were political rather than linguistic in nature, originating in the Black Power movement of the 1960s, in which "Africa was 'discovered' as a possible new source for Americanisms associated with blacks".

Earliest documented examples

The scholarly consensus, based on Allen Walker Read, identifies the earliest known use of O.K. in print as 1839, in the March 23 edition of the Boston Morning Post (an American newspaper). The announcement of a trip by the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society (a "frolicsome group" according to Read) received attention from the Boston papers. Charles Gordon Greene wrote about the event using the line that is widely regarded as the first instance of this strain of okay, complete with gloss:

The above is from the Providence Journal, the editor of which is a little too quick on the trigger, on this occasion. We said not a word about our deputation passing "through the city" of Providence.—We said our brethren were going to New York in the Richmond, and they did go, as per Post of Thursday. The "Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells," is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have his "contribution box," et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.^{[citation needed]}

Read gives a number of subsequent appearances in print. Seven instances were accompanied ("glossed") with variations on "all correct" such as "oll korrect" or "ole kurreck," but five appeared with no accompanying explanation, suggesting that the word was expected to be well known to readers and possibly in common colloquial use at the time.

Formerly, various claims of earlier usage had been made. For example, it was claimed that the phrase appeared in a 1790 court record from Sumner County, Tennessee, discovered in 1859 by a Tennessee historian named Albigence Waldo Putnam, in which Andrew Jackson apparently said "proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for an uncalled good, which was O.K.". However, Read challenged such claims, and his assertions have been generally accepted.

David Dalby (see above) resurrected some of the claims of earlier usage. One claimed example from 1941 is the apparent notation "we arrived ok" in the hand-written diary of William Richardson going from Boston to New Orleans in 1815, about a month after the Battle of New Orleans. Frederic Cassidy asserts that he personally tracked down this diary and notes that:

After many attempts to track down this diary, Read and I at last discovered that it is owned by the grandson of the original writer, Professor L. Richardson, Jr., of the Department of Classical Studies at Duke University. Through his courtesy we were able to examine this manuscript carefully, to make greatly enlarged photographs of it, and to become convinced (as is Richardson) that, whatever the marks in the manuscript are, they are not OK.

Similarly, H. L. Mencken, who originally considered it "very clear that 'o. k.' is actually in the manuscript", later recanted his endorsement of the expression, asserting that it was used no earlier than 1839. Mencken described the diary entry as a misreading of the author's self-correction, and stated it was in reality the first two letters of the words a h[andsome] before noticing the phrase had been used in the previous line and changing his mind.

Another example given by Dalby is a Jamaican planter's diary of 1816, which apparently records a negro as saying "Oh ki, massa, doctor no need be fright, we no want to hurt him". Cassidy asserts that this is a misreading of the source, which actually begins "Oh, ki, massa ...", where ki is a phrase by itself:

In all other examples of this interjection that I have found, it is simply ki (once spelled kie). As here, it expresses surprise, amusement, satisfaction, mild expostulation, and the like. It has nothing like the meaning of the adjective OK, which in the earliest recorded examples means 'all right, good,' though it later acquires other meanings, but even when used as an interjection does not express surprise, expostulation, or anything similar.

Spelling variations

Whether this word is printed as OK, okay, or O.K. is a matter normally resolved in the style manual for the publication involved. Dictionaries and style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style and The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage provide no consensus.

Variation	Where used/Origins
okeh	An alternative English spelling, no longer common. Also see Okeh Records.
kay or 'kay	Notably used in Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny as a filler word by the maniacal Captain Queeg.[citation needed]
k or kk	Commonly used in instant messaging, or in SMS messages. Before the days of SMS, K was used as a Morse code prosign for "okay."
Okie dokie	Popularly known at least by the 1930s in "The Little Rascals" (Oki doki). The phrase can be extended further, e.g. "Okie dokie (ala) pokie / smokie / artichokie / karaoke," etc.[citation needed]
okej	Used in Poland, although ok is more common in written language; sometimes oki is said.
ôkê	Used in Vietnam; okey also used, but ok more commonly.
okej	Used in Swedish, Slovene, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and sometimes Latvian; ok also used, but less common.
oké	Used in Dutch. okee, ok and okay are also used, but are less common in the formal written language.
ookoo	Used in Finland. Pronounced the same way as "OK," but spelled like the pronunciation of the letters.
oukej	Used in Czech and Slovak. Pronounced as the English OK. When written OK, it is pronounced [o:ka:]. Neither version recognized as official.
óla kalá (όλα καλά) or O.K	Used in Greek. The abbreviation is pronounced as the English OK.

Usage

Okay can mean "all right" or "satisfactory." For example, "I hope the children are okay" means "I hope the children are all right"; "I think I did OK in the exam" means "I think I did well, but not perfect, on the exam"; and "he is okay" means "he is good," or "he is well," depending on context.

Okay meaning "all right" can be used as the stand-alone question Okay? asking if there are any problems or confusion. This question can also be used as an informal greeting, as in "Okay, Jack?" equivalent to "How are you, Jack?"

Depending on context and inflection, okay can also imply mediocrity. For example: "The concert was just okay."

Okay can be used as an adjective or adverb: "He ran an OK race," "He did OK."

Okay can be used as an affirmative answer to a question or to express agreement with a statement, similar in both cases to "Yes."

Okay is sometimes used merely to acknowledge a question without giving an affirmation. For example: "You're going to give back the money that you stole, right?" "Okay."

Saying okay in a sarcastic or questioning tone or elongating the word can indicate that the person one is talking to is considered crazy and/or exasperatingly stubborn in their view. "I really saw a UFO last night!" "Okay..."

Okay! can also be used as an exclamation in place of words like "enough!" or "stop!"

Okay can be a noun or verb meaning approval. "Did you get the supervisor's okay?" "The boss okayed the proposal."

Okay has multiple uses in public speaking. As an interjection at the opening of a speech, lecture, or reading, okay is used to call for the audience's attention and to signal that the speaker is about to begin. Similarly, it can be used as a section break in the middle of speech to mark a shift in topic. Finally, okay can be used at the end of a speech, lecture, or explanation to request listener feedback, similar to "Are you with me?" or "Do you understand?" Based on context and convention, this usage can be seen as asking for various responses ranging from simple, silent headshaking or nodding to full, detailed questions or rebuttals.

When used in phone texting or short message system (SMS), "Okay" is occasionally truncated to a single "k."

International usage

In Brazil and Mexico, as well as in other Latin American countries, the word is pronounced just as it is in English and is used very frequently. Although pronouncing it the same, Spanish speakers often spell the word "okey" to conform with the pronunciation rules of the language. In Brazil, it may be also pronounced as "ô-kei." In Portugal, it is used with its Portuguese pronunciation and sounds something like "ókâi" (similar to the English pronunciation but with the "ó" sounding like the "o" in "lost" or "top").

Arabic speakers also use the word (أوكي) widely, particularly in areas of former British occupation like Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, and Palestine but also all over the Arab world due to the prevalence of American cinema and television. It is pronounced just as it is in English but is very rarely seen in Arabic newspapers and formal media.

In Israel, the word okay is common as an equivalent to the Hebrew words בסדר [b'seder] ('in order') and טוב [tov] ('good'). It is written as it sounds in English אוקיי.

It is used in Japan and Korea in a somewhat restricted sense, fairly equivalent to "all right." Okay is often used in colloquial Japanese as a replacement for 大丈夫 (daijōbu "all right")　or いい (ii "good") and often followed by です (desu — the copula).

In Chinese, the term "好" (hǎo; literally: "good"), can be modified to fit most of usages of okay. For example, "好了" (hao le) closely resembles the interjection usage of okay. The "了" indicates a change of state, in this case it indicates the achievement of consensus. Likewise, "OK" is commonly transformed into "OK了" (OK le) when communicating with foreigners or with fellow Cantonese speaking people in at least Hong Kong and possibly to an extent, other regions of China. Other usages of Okay such as "I am okay" can be translated as "我还好." In Hong Kong, movies or dramas set in modern times use the term "ok" as part of the sprinkling of English included in otherwise Cantonese dialog. In Mandarin, it is also, somewhat humorously, used in the "spelling" of the word for karaoke, "卡拉OK," pronounced "kah-lah-oh-kei" (Mandarin does not natively have a syllable with the pronunciation "kei"). On the computer, okay is usually translated as "确定," which means "confirm" or "confirmed."

In Taiwan, OK is frequently used in various sentences, popular among but not limited to younger generations. This includes the aforementioned "OK了" (Okay le), "OK嗎" (Okay ma), meaning "Is it okay?" or "OK啦" (Okay la), a strong, persuading affirmative, as well as the somewhat tongue-in-cheek explicit yes/no construction "O不OK?" (O bu Okay), "Is it okay or not?."

In France, OK is used to communicate agreement, and is generally followed by a French phrase (e.g. OK, d'accord).

In the Philippines "okay lang" is a common expression, literally meaning "just okay" or "just fine." They also use it in sms but with the letter "k" only which means okay also. Sometimes spelled as okey.

In Malay, it is frequently used with the emphatic suffix "lah": OK-lah.

In Vietnamese, it is spelled "Ô kê"

In India it is often used after a sentence to mean "did you get it?", often not regarded politely, for example, "I want this job done, okay?" or at the end of a conversation (mostly on the phone) followed by "bye" as in, "Okay, bye."

In Germany, OK is spelled and pronounced as in English. The meaning ranges from acknowledgement to describing something neither good nor bad, same as in US/UK usage.

In Maldivian Okay is used in different ways, often used to agree with something, more often used while departing from a gathering "Okay Dahnee/Kendee."

Gesture

Main article: A-ok

In the United States and much of Europe a related gesture is made by touching the index finger with the thumb (forming a rough circle) and raising of the remaining fingers. It is not known whether the gesture is derived from the expression, or if the gesture appeared first. The gesture was popularized in America in 1836 as a symbol to support then Presidential candidate Martin Van Buren. This was because Van Buren's nickname, Old Kinderhook, derived from his hometown of Kinderhook, NY, had the initials O K. Similar gestures have different meanings in other cultures.

Computers

A Facebook modal dialog box using the spelling Okay

OK is used to label buttons in modal dialog boxes such as error messages or print dialogs, indicating that the user must press the button to accept the contents of the dialog box and continue. It is often placed next to a Cancel button which allows the user to dismiss the dialog box without accepting its contents. When a modal dialog box contains only one button, it is almost always labeled "OK" by convention and default. In this usage, it is usually rendered to the screen in upper case without punctuation: OK, rather than O.K., Okay, or Ok. The OK button can probably be traced to user interface research done for the Apple Lisa. However, modern user interface guidelines prefer to avoid modal dialog boxes if possible, and use more specific verbs, such as Continue, to label their action buttons instead of the generic OK.

PLATO normally responded to user input with ok or no.^{[citation needed]}

PRIMOS, the operating system that ran on Prime computers, had a command interpreter which would print OK to indicate a command could be entered.^{[citation needed]}

On the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (1980), there was an OK> prompt, which indicated that the Color Computer was ready to accept commands.^{[citation needed]}

Many IBM PC compatible computers from the 1980s onwards performed a memory check during start-up. A counter showed the verified memory during the operation, sometimes suffixed with OK.^{[citation needed]}

Some programming language interpreters such as BASIC and Forth print ok when ready to accept input from the keyboard.^{[citation needed]} This ok prompt is used on Sun, Apple, and other computers with the Forth-based Open Firmware (OpenBoot). The appearance of ok in inappropriate contexts on these systems is the subject of some humor.

In HTTP, the HyperText Transfer Protocol, upon which the World Wide Web is based, a successful response from the server is defined as OK (with the numerical code 200 as specified in RFC 2616). The Session Initiation Protocol also defines a response, 200 OK, which conveys success for most requests (RFC 3261).

Some Linux distributions, including those based on Red Hat, display boot progress on successive lines on-screen which include [ OK ].

References

• Beath, Paul R. (1946). 'O.K.' in radio sign language. American Speech, 21 (3), 235.
• Cassidy, Frederic G. (1981). OK — is it African?. American Speech, 58 (4), 269–273.
• Dalby, David. (1971, January 8). O.K., A.O.K. and O KE. New York Times, pp. L-31/4-6.
• Degges, Mary. (1975). The etymology of OK again. American Speech, 50 (3/4), 334–335.
• Eubanks, Ralph T. (1960). The basic derivation of 'O.K.' American Speech, 35 (3), 188–192.
• Greco, Frank A. (1975). The etymology of OK again. American Speech, 50 (3/4), 333–334.
• Heflin, Woodford A. (1941). 'O.K.,' but what do we know about it?. American Speech, 16 (2), 87–95.
• Heflin, Woodford A. (1962). 'O.K.' and its incorrect etymology. American Speech, 37 (4), 243–248.
• Levin, Harry; & Gray, Deborah. (1983). The Lecturer's OK. American Speech, 58 (3), 195–200.
• Matthews, Albert. (1941). A note on 'O.K.'. American Speech, 16 (4), 256–259.
• Mencken, H. L. (1936). The American language (4th ed., pp. 206–207). New York: Knopf.
• Mencken, H. L. (1942). 'O.K.,' 1840. American Speech, 17 (2), 126–127.
• Mencken, H. L. (1945). The American language: Supplement I (pp. 269–279). New York: Knopf.
• Mencken, H. L. (1949, October 1). The life and times of O.K. New Yorker, pp. 57–61.
• McMillan, James B. (1942). 'O.K.,' a comment. American Speech, 17 (2), 127.
• Pound, Louise. (1942). Some folk-locutions. American Speech, 17 (4), 247–250.
• Pound, Louise. (1951). Two queries: Usages of O.K. American Speech, 26 (3), 223.
• Pyles, Thomas. (1952). 'Choctaw' okeh again: A note. American Speech, 27 (2), 157–158.
• Read, Allen W. (1941, July 19). The evidence on O.K.. Saturday Review of Literature, pp. 3–4, 10–11.
• Rife, J. M. (1966). The early spread of "O.K." to Greek schools. American Speech, 41 (3), 238.
• Wait, William B. (1941). Richardson's 'O.K.' of 1815. American Speech, 16 (2), 85–86, 136.
• Walser, Richard. (1965). A Boston "O.K." poem in 1840. American Speech, 40 (2), 120–126.
• Weber, Robert. (1942). A Greek O.K. American Speech, 17 (2), 127–128.
• Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, Merriam-Webster, 1989.

Further reading

• Metcalf, Allan. (2011). OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-537793-4

External links

• Where did OKAY come from?
• The Choctaw Expression Okeh and the Americanism Okay
• Ok. Let's continue.
• Most Recognized Word on the Planet: OK or O.K. or Okay
• Origin of the Word OK
• NPR: The Origin of OK (audio)
• OK/OKAY- Exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery, Swiss Institute, New York University
• FAQ: "OK"
• BBC: How 'OK' took over the world. Retrieved 18 February 2011.