OK

For other uses, see Okay (disambiguation).

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

Okay (also spelled OK, O.K.) is a colloquial English word denoting approval, 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 grammatical particle it does not modify any other particular word, but rather reinforces the general point being made, particularly if that point is being called into question. And so, for example, a response to “So the accident kept him from going to the reunion?” might be “Oh, he went to it okay, but he had bruised ribs and his car was a wreck.” In this case “okay” does not modify him or his going anywhere; it is a particle emphasizing the point that is being questioned. As a noun and verb it means "assent" ("The boss okayed the purchase"). The origins of "okay" are not known with certainty and have been the subject of much discussion over the years.

Earliest documented examples

The earliest claimed usage of okay is 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 a Negro man, which was O.K."

What is widely regarded as the earliest known example of the modern "ok" being set down on paper is a quintessential "we arrived ok" notation 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. One entry says "we traveled on to N. York where we arrived all well, at 7 P.M." By most reckonings a later similar entry uses "ok" in place of "all well": "Arrived at Princeton, a handsome little village, 15 miles from N Brunswick, ok & at Trenton, where we dined at 1 P.M."

The original "ok &" was edited to read "o.k. and" in the print publication and that rendering was widely accepted at the time. H. L. Mencken considered it "very clear that 'o. k.' is actually in the manuscript." The editor of American Speech noted that this use of "o.k." was "likely to become a locus classicus of the expression." H.L. Mencken later recanted his endorsement of the expression in favor on one espoused by those who say that "O.K." was used no earlier than 1839. Mencken said of the diary entry "This o k is really therefore the first two letters of a handsome.

Allen Walker Read identified 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.

This apparently resulted from a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s. The abbreviation in this case is from the misspelled "oll korrect."

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.

A year later, 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. "'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.

James Pyle, inventor of "Pyle's Pearline" purchased by Procter & Gamble in 1914 and renamed "Ivory Snow," placed an ad in the New York Times, October 23, 1862 which refers to James Pyle's O.K. Soap. The New York Times obituary of James Pyle dated January 21, 1900 says "Brought O.K. Into Popularity." The obituary states "He was the first to utilize in advertisements the letters OK in their business significance of all correct. He had read the version of the origin of the use of these letters by Stonewall Jackson as an endorsement and was struck by their catchiness. By his extensive employment of them he probably did more than any other person to raise them to the dignity of a popular term and an established business institution."

However, and importantly for one candidate etymology, earlier documented examples exist of African slaves in America using phonetically identical or strikingly similar words in a similar sense to okay. (See Wolof: waw-kay, below.)

Etymology

See also: List of proposed etymologies of OK

Various etymologies have been proposed for okay, but none have been unanimously agreed upon. Most are generally regarded to be unlikely or anachronistic.

There are four proposed etymologies which have received material academic support since the 1960s. They are:

1. Initials of the "comically misspelled" Oll Korrect
2. Initials of "Old Kinderhook" a nickname for President Martin Van Buren which was a reference to Van Buren's birthplace Kinderhook, NY.
3. Choctaw word okeh or hoke
4. Wolof and Bantu word waw-kay or the Mande (aka "Mandinke" or "Mandingo") phrase o ke

Oll Korrect has been extensively discussed by Allen Walker Read, although the primary purpose of those discussions was to promote "Old Kinderhook"; the two differ materially from other candidates in that they:

• Have widespread verifiable pre-existing documented usage,
• Have verifiable geographic overlaps with okay's first documented instances,
• Have equivalent meanings,
• Do not fit over-neatly into contemporaneous or subsequent political or cultural circumstances, and
• Are remarkably similar in pronunciation to okay (having due regard to the danger of false coincidence, which is endemic to colloquial etymology)

One theory of derivation which, perhaps surprisingly, has received little attention, is that it was 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"). Another postulation, that it derives 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!", is very unlikely, as contact with the Lakota people was not really established at the time that "okay" or "ok" was first noted.

Oll Korrect

This is historically the most interesting etymology, based on Read's extensive discussion of it, and it became widely known following his landmark publications in 1963–1964.

Allen Walker Read, revisiting and refuting his own work of 20 years earlier, contributed a major survey of the early history of okay 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" and N.C. for "'nuff ced." 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 chief strength of this etymology is its clear written record.

A problem with this etymology is the implication that common usage was driven by the written appearance of a geographically and socially isolated slang term that was alien to the rest of the country. While appearing in written form often spreads and expands the usage of colloquial terms, it is rare for a single instance of written speech to make a term colloquial. The relatively slow take-up of the term by other English-speaking countries illustrates this pattern.

Another problem with this etymology is that the "comical misspellings" were phonetic. "Oll Korrect" (sometimes "orl korrect") clearly suggests that what is being comically misspelled was heard from someone speaking with a non-standard accent, either deliberately or habitually. The semantic similarity between "oll korrect" and the German (Pennsylvanian Dutch) "alles in Ordnung" ("everything is in order/all is correct") should be noted. However, at that time this accent was not widespread in the United States outside the north-east, which would have tended to reduce the rate of wider adoption of the now-arbitrary slang.

Old Kinderhook

Read's series of papers offered an interesting and memorable discussion of "Oll Korrect," but the purpose of those papers was to support his New York City based "Old Kinderhook" etymology referring to Martin Van Buren's residence in Kinderhook, New York. Read had formulated that etymology about twenty years earlier, but it had come under fire.

Van Buren was not by any means known as "Old Kinderhook" in general usage, and Read offered only two instances of the use of "O.K." that mentioned "Old Kinderhook." One was an 1840 ad for a breast pin celebrating Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. The other was a facetious use as part of a gag to take a swipe at the Whigs; indeed, to take the use of the abbreviations in that gag seriously is to miss the whole point. Many linguists, including the editors of The Dictionary of American English and the Oxford English Dictionary found these uses no more significant than any of other uses of "O.K." over the previous year and a half. They considered its use in the lapel pin ad an "afterthought" dropped into an ad that was essentially a celebration of Jackson and the frontier associations of the expression.

Read countered, however, that the ad made it evident "that the expression was strange and new at that time," that the earlier uses of "O.K." in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, New Orleans, New York, etc. – including the humorous uses of "Oll Korrect" – were "not the real thing, but anticipative of the real thing." He said that, regardless of the surface meaning of those earlier uses, their true, although secret and cabalist reference, was to Van Buren's residence, and that "Old Kinderhook" established the trajectory of "O.K." as it "rocketed across the American linguistic sky."

Read's etymology gained immediate acceptance, and is offered without reservation in most dictionaries. Modern dictionaries almost invariably offer an etymology that credits the historical use of "Oll Korrect", and some also discuss the apparent wider popularization of "O.K." as a product of the nearly contemporaneous "Old Kinderhook" usage.

Old Kaintuck

Author Robert Shea, in the afterward to his historical novel set in 1830s Illinois, "Shaman," proposes that the expression "OK" stems from the general consensus that Old Kaintuck whiskey was the best whiskey made, the standard of excellence for whiskey.

Choctaw: okeh

An 1885 magazine noted "the introduction of the Choctaw word into our Anglo-American speech". Regardless of what other derivations the expression might have, it has for over a hundred years often been purposefully and explicitly used as a Choctaw, or at least Indian language, loanword.

The emergence of the expression coincided with a seminal period in the development of American popular culture.

The War of 1812 and the appearance on the American scene of the frontiersman -- both in the flesh and as a national symbol -- mark the beginning of an indigenous psyche Americana which is strikingly reflected in the flood of Americanisms originating in the nineteenth century.

The lingua franca across much of this frontier was a pidgin version of Choctaw, usually referred to as Mobilian trade language. The 1809 report of the Lewis and Clark Expedition stated flatly that Mobilian was "spoken by all the Indians from the east side of the Mississippi."

This is, of course, an over-simplification and over-statement. The Choctaw language and culture, however, did play a disproportionately significant part in trade, military, and religious affairs across the young country. There were more than 90,000 copies of books printed in or about the Choctaw language before 1840 by religious interests alone.

Until the mid-1960’s scholarly discourse and dictionary entries of the day routinely cited a Choctaw etymology based on resources going back to 1825, especially the 1915 A dictionary of the Choctaw language and an 1870 Grammar of the Choctaw Language. These sources and others were continually reprinted by a variety of interests and later posted to the Internet.

A common spelling for the expression in question in the earliest works was "oke," or "hoke," which was glossed in the 1915 Dictionary as "it is." A 1825 Choctaw spelling book used the expression "-oke" to end over a quarter of the sentences, but never included it any any word lists or discussions. It was as if the assumption was that anyone at all familiar with the Choctaw language knew how to use the expression.

Linguists were especially interested the 1870 Grammar. This work treated the expression “okeh” in some detail, saying it was often used as an "affirmative contradistinctive" particle meaning "it is so and not otherwise" to emphasize a point being made.

Linguists have noted that the vernacular English use of “OK” is often very typical of Choctaw syntax but very atypical of English. English uses modifiers to express description or meaning, while Choctaw uses particles that do not modify any other particular word, but rather reinforce the general point being made, particularly if that point is being called into question.

The 1870 Choctaw grammar also discussed various uses of "okeh" or "ok !" used as an interjection "to excite the attention of the party addressed": “OK, let’s get started.” These interjections are also used with a variety of intonations to express a variety of other emotions as well, from joy to lamentation. That is also the case in English, where, depending on the tone of voice, "O.K." might be used to express anything from joyful exuberance to grim capitulation and defeat.

In the mid-1960’s the expression was still often spelled "okeh" in popular usage in America, and that was a preferred spelling in other parts of the world such as Germany and Russia. It is still a preferred spelling in those parts of the world. The once popular British expression “a bit of okeh” has been almost entirely replaced in recent years with “a bit of OK.”

Perhaps the most pervasive element of the every facet of the etymology of "O.K." is the role of Andrew Jackson. Jackson and his Tennessee Volunteers certainly heard the word frequently from the Choctaws while fighting side by side with them in the Pensacola Campaign of the War of 1812.

One President who without question used the Choctaw "okeh" to approve presidential papers was Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a highly respected historian and author of, among other works, the five volume A History of the American People before he became President. He always used that Choctaw "okeh" in place of "O.K." He did not use the spelling "O.K.," he said "Because it is wrong." He referred people who questioned his practice to standard dictionaries of the day which cited the Choctaw etymology from the 1870 Grammar.

Another 1918 development in the etymology of "O.K." was the creation of the Okeh record label. The announcement of that event said "This name is derived from the original Indian spelling of the term colloquially known as O.K., standing for 'all right." The record label originally had an Indian head in the logo.

Another explicit use the the Choctaw etymology dealt with the British condiment, Mason's OK sauce. In 1885 George Mason & Co. was specializing in beef broths and lozenges for invalids. In 1911 they added "O.K. sauce" to their line and promoted it based on "the Choctaw Oke or Hoke, meaning 'it is so.'" The "O.K." name became such a hit that by 1929 they were also advertising "O.K." Pickles," and "O.K." Chutney. The British linguist Eric Partridge somewhat sheepishly confessed that he, like "the general public in England," used the expression as a loanword from Choctaw until he encountered Read's etymology and realized he had been using the term incorrectly.

No discussion of the Choctaw expression would be complete without mention of the "O.K. Boys," a group "said to number 1,000 'bravos'…" who borrowed "O.K." as their name and war cry ("flat burglary" according to one wag) and who, as standard bearers for the New York City Tammanies, beat drums, shouted "O.K." and held pow-wows. (Bravos short for "indios bravos" — "wild Indians" or "Indian braves"). Tammany Hall was often referred to as the Great Wigwam.

There were Tammany Societies all across the young country. They were named after and celebrated the Delaware chief Tamanend or Tammany. All their activities — be it a parade featuring a large picture of the Delaware chief or a ball at the Tammany Temple commemorating Battle of New Orleans — was merely an opportunity to delight in Native American culture, regalia, rituals and language. And if the standard bearers of the New York wigwam of Tammanies chose the name "O.K." as their name and war cry, it was because they considered it an Indian expression, and delighted in using , indeed, in shouting it, as such.

It should be noted that an interest and appreciation for the Choctaw etymology is not only a thing of the past. The Choctaw expression is still sometimes used in such works as Menopause with Science and Soul: A Guidebook for Navigating the Journey. The "O.K. sauce" bottle mystique is alive and well on the Internet; a Google search of "Mason's OK sauce" yields over 50,000 ebay hits. And there are hundreds of options for downloading lyrics, soundtracks, videos, tweets, ringtones, etc. of the song "All Mixed Up" written by Woody Gutherie and recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1964.

You know this language that we speak,
is part German, Latin and part Greek
Celtic and Arabic all in a heap,
well amended by the people in the street.
Choctaw gave us the word "okay"…

Wolof: waw-kay

Documented instances exist well before 1839 of African slaves in America being quoted phonetically using words strikingly similar to the now common usage and meaning of okay. For example, in 1784:

"Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe;..."

And a Jamaican planter's diary of 1816 records a "Negro" as saying:

"Oh ki, massa, doctor no need be fright, we no want to hurt him."

In particular, Wolof is a West African language which has had an unusually strong influence upon (once) colloquial English, with well documented examples such as banana, jive, dig (it), yam, and sock (someone), along with the contested hip or hip cat. Importantly, a key study claims Wolof to be an important lingua franca among American slaves.

"Waaw" means "yes" and the suffix "-kay" or "-kai" adds emphasis. A simplistic word-for-word translation of Wolof's "wawkay" is "yes [emphatically]" or "yes, indeed"; but better usage translations would be "I agree," "I'll comply," "that's good," "that's right," or "all correct". The consonance of this last translation with the first documented usage of okay could be significant, or could be coincidence. However, okay's colloquial rather than formal usage strongly coincides with other Wolof words which have migrated documentedly into the American version of the English language, and its earliest documented usage is explicitly colloquial, not to say jocular. Significantly, the emergence of okay in white Americans' vocabulary dates from a period when many refugees from Southern slavery were arriving in the North of the United States, where the word was first documented.

A strength of this etymology is its consonance with Read's own documented evidence of the craze for "comical misspellings." These typically took the form of phonetic transcriptions of locally heard accents. For example, the German-accented (Pennsylvanian Dutch-accented) "Vell, vot ov it?" Many refugees from Southern slavery were arriving in the North of the United States at the time of okay's first written appearance and it is likely that Boston residents would have come in contact with Africans using Wolof terms and could well have had wawkay translated for them as "all correct."

The underlying theme here is English-speaking Americans taking up a locally-heard African word.

French: "Au quai"

French sources claim that "au quai" ("on the quayside", and pronounced "OK") was a maritime usage to check that cargo was delivered alongside, ready for loading aboard ship. See: FAS, "free alongside ship", an Incoterm)

WWII War Time: "0 Killed , (Zero Killed)"

An unconfirmed claim of the origin of the word O.K came from World War II war time when soldiers would come back from the trenches to see how many people had been killed that day. The officials would write on a board how many people had been killed by printing the digit corresponding to the number of deaths that day followed by the word "Killed", for example, "9 Killed" or "17 Killed". Soldiers would read only the first few symbols on the board as the word "Killed" held no new semantically useful information. If there had been no deaths that day there would be a "0 Killed", of which, the soldiers would read "0 K" (Zero K or Oh-Kay) hence O.K was seen to be a good thing.

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
oki or oky	A quick way of saying okay
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.
k or kk	Commonly used in instant messaging, or in SMS messages. Commonly attributed to have originated from actor/writer Sean Neil Connell. An alternative theory suggests that the usage arose as a result of an intermittently occurring bug in the online game Everquest. The bug would sometimes drop the first character of a sentence. A response to a question was often phrased simply as "K", as an abbreviation for "OK." If the first character of a one-word reply of this type was dropped, the reader would see nothing at all and the custom of using "KK" was adopted so that, if this occurred, the second "K" would still be received.
'mkay, m'kay, or mkay	In use long before, but popularized by Mr. Van Driessen in Beavis and Butt-head and Mr. Mackey in South Park.
Okey kokkey	Used frequently by Giovanni Capello from Mind Your Language.
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," etc.
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.
okei	Sometimes used in Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish and Latvian. Quite common in Estonian.
okej	Used in Swedish, Serbian, Croatian and sometimes Latvian; ok also used, but less common.
oké	Used in Hungarian. OK, O.K., ok (especially in SMS), o.k., okés, okézsoké are also commonly used; oxi was in sporadic use in the 1980s, now rare.
oké	Used in Dutch. okee, ok and okay are also used, but are less common in the formal written language.
okey	Especially in Latin American Spanish and Turkish. Not uncommon in Swedish.
occhei	Humorous phonetic translation in Italy.
ochei	Alternative spelling in Italy, used without any humorous intent at all by Leo Ortolani in his comic "Rat-Man" published by Marvel Italia (http://www.rat-man.com/).
ookoo	Used in Finland. Pronounced the same way as "OK", but spelled like the pronunciation of the letters.
Theek Hai	Used in Hindustani (Urdu/Hindi) and other North Indian languages of India and neighbouring countries. OK is rarely used in regional languages.
oukej	Used in Czech and Slovak. Pronounced as the English OK. When written OK, it is pronounced [o:ka:]. Neither version recognized as official.
oquei	Phonetic translation to Latin American Spanish.
okey or ok	Used in Romanian. Also used is ochei which is a humorous way of reading the word phonetically.
okely dokely or okely dokely do	Variation of OK used by the character, Ned Flanders, in the television show "The Simpsons" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Flanders and http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=okely%20dokely

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.

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

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 tone, a questioning tone or elongating the word can indicate that the person one is talking to is considered crazy and/or exacerbatingly 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 can be used as an adjective or adverb: "He ran an OK race", "He did OK."

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, it 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 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.

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 Nepal "thik cha" refers to as okay.

In Germany, it is spelled and pronounced in the same way as in English. The meaning ranges from acknowledgement to describing something neither good nor bad, same as in US/UK usage. It is often substituted with '++'.

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 (to form a 'K'). It is not known whether the gesture is derived from the expression, or if the gesture appeared first. Similar gestures have different meanings in other cultures.

Computers

File:JavaScript Alert Dialog.PNG

A typical modal dialog box with prominent OK button

File:Facebook Error Dialog.JPG

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.

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. This is also used in the OLPC XO-1 laptop OpenFirmware BIOS.

Many PCs from the 1990s performed a memory check during start-up. A counter showed the verified memory during the operation, sometimes suffixed with OK.

During the boot sequence of several Linux distributions, after an attempt to start each service, the result is shown as [ OK ] or [FAIL] as appropriate.

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 programming language interpreters such as BASIC and Forth print ok when ready to accept input from the keyboard.

The default prompt on Primeos, the operating system that ran on Prime computers was OK.

References

Bibliography

• 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 Literaure, 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.

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
• A Straight Dope column on the origin
• Origin of the "OK Button"
• 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"