''OK'' (), with spelling variations including ''okay'', ''okeh'', ''O.K.'' and

many others Many (/ˈmɛni/) may refer to: * grammatically plural in number *an English quantifier used with count nouns indicating a large but indefinite number of; at any rate, more than a few ;Place names * Many, Moselle, a commune of the Moselle depart ...

, is an English word (originating in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

) denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, acknowledgment, or a sign of indifference. ''OK'' is frequently used as a

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

in other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet. The origin of ''OK'' is disputed; however, most modern reference works hold that it originated around Boston as part of a fad in the late 1830s of abbreviating misspellings; that it is an initialism of "oll korrect" as a misspelling of "all correct". This origin was first described by linguist

Allen Walker Read Allen Walker Read (June 2, 1906 – October 16, 2002) was an American etymologist and lexicographer. Born in Minnesota, he spent much of his career as a professor at Columbia University in New York. Read's work ''Classic American Graffiti'' is we ...

in the 1960s. As an

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

, ''OK'' principally means "adequate" or "acceptable" as a contrast to "bad" ("The boss approved this, so it is OK to send out"); it can also mean "mediocre" when used in contrast with "good" ("The french fries were great, but the burger was just OK"). It fulfills a similar role as an adverb ("Wow, you did OK for your first time skiing!"). As an

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling, situation or reaction. It is a diverse category, with many different types, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curses (''da ...

, it can denote compliance ("OK, I will do that"), or agreement ("OK, that is fine"). It can mean "assent" when it is used as a

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

("the boss gave her the OK to the purchase") or, more colloquially, as a

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

("the boss OKed the purchase"). ''OK'', as an adjective, can express acknowledgement without approval. As a versatile discourse marker or continuer, it can also be used with appropriate

intonation Intonation may refer to: *Intonation (linguistics), variation of speaking pitch that is not used to distinguish words *Intonation (music), a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument *Intonation Music ...

to show doubt or to seek confirmation ("OK?", "Is that OK?").Yngve, Victor. "On getting a word in edgewise," page 568. Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting f theChicago Linguistic Society, 1970. Some of this variation in use and shape of the word is also found in other languages.

Etymologies

Many explanations for the origin of the expression have been suggested, but few have been discussed seriously by

linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures ...

. The following proposals have found mainstream recognition.

Boston abbreviation fad

The

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

that most reference works provide today is based on a survey of the word's early history in print: a series of six articles by

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 throughout the rest of the world. He also documented controversy surrounding ''OK'' and the history of its

folk etymologies Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

, both of which are intertwined with the history of the word itself. Read argues that, at the time of the expression's first appearance in print, a broader

fad A fad, trend, or craze is any form of collective behavior that develops within a culture, a generation, or social group in which a group of people enthusiastically follow an impulse for a short time period. Fads are objects or behaviors tha ...

existed in the United States of "comical misspellings" and of forming and employing acronyms, themselves based on colloquial speech patterns: The general fad is speculated to 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". The term appears to have achieved national prominence in 1840, when supporters of the Democratic political party claimed during the

1840 United States presidential election Presidential elections were held in the United States from October 30 to December 2, 1840. In the shadow of an incomplete economic recovery from the Panic of 1837, Whig nominee William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent President Martin Van Bure ...

that it stood for "Old Kinderhook", a nickname for the Democratic president and candidate for reelection,

Martin Van Buren Martin Van Buren ( ; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as Attorney General o ...

, a native of

Kinderhook, New York Kinderhook is a town in the northern part of Columbia County, New York, United States. The population was 8,330 at the 2020 census,U.S. Census, 2020, 'Kinderhook town, Columbia County, New York' making it the most populous municipality in Columb ...

. "Vote for OK" was snappier than using his Dutch name. In response, Whig opponents attributed ''OK'', in the sense of "Oll Korrect", to the bad spelling of

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before Presidency of Andrew Jackson, his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses ...

, Van Buren's predecessor. The country-wide publicity surrounding the election appears to have been a critical event in ''OK''s history, widely and suddenly popularizing it across the United States. Allen Walker Read proposed an etymology of ''OK'' in "Old Kinderhook" in 1941. The evidence presented in that article was somewhat sparse, and the connection to "Oll Korrect" not fully elucidated. Various challenges to the etymology were presented; 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 now offered without reservation in most dictionaries. (good summary of the results of Read's six articles) Read himself was nevertheless open to evaluating alternative explanations:

Choctaw

In "All Mixed Up", the folk singer

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of The Weav ...

sang that ''OK'' was of

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

origin, as the dictionaries of the time tended to agree. Three major American reference works (Webster's, New Century, Funk & Wagnalls) cited this etymology as the probable origin until as late as 1961. The earliest written evidence for the Choctaw origin is provided in work by the Christian missionaries

Cyrus Byington Cyrus Byington (March 11, 1793 – December 31, 1868) was a Christian missionary from Massachusetts who began working with the Choctaw in Mississippi in 1821. Although he had been trained as a lawyer, he abandoned law as a career and became a mi ...

and Alfred Wright in 1825. These missionaries ended many sentences in their translation of the Bible with the

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

"okeh", meaning "it is so", which was listed as an alternative spelling in the 1913 Webster's. Byington's ''Dictionary of the Choctaw Language'' confirms the ubiquity of the "okeh" particle, and his ''Grammar of the Choctaw Language'' calls the particle ''-keh'' an "affirmative contradistinctive", with the "distinctive" o- prefix. The

Choctaw language The Choctaw language (Choctaw: ), spoken by the Choctaw, an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, US, is a member of the Muskogean languages, Muskogean language family. Chickasaw language, Chickasaw is a separate but closely related l ...

was one of the languages spoken at this time in the

Southeastern United States The Southeastern United States, also known as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical List of regions in the United States, region of the United States located in the eastern portion of the Southern United States and t ...

by a tribe with significant contact with African slaves. The major language of trade in this area,

Mobilian Jargon Mobilian Jargon (also Mobilian trade language, Mobilian Trade Jargon, Chickasaw–Choctaw trade language, Yamá) was a pidgin used as a lingua franca among Native American groups living along the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico around the time ...

, was based on Choctaw-Chickasaw, two

Muskogean Muskogean ( ; also Muskhogean) is a language family spoken in the Southeastern United States. Members of the family are Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Typologically, Muskogean languages are highly synthetic and agglutinative. One docume ...

-family languages. This language was used, in particular, for communication with the slave-owningTiya Miles, ''Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom''
University of California Press, 2005, pp. 170-173
, ''Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture'', Oklahoma Historical Society, Retrieved 29 December 2014

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

(an

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages () are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, almost all surviving I ...

-family language). For the three decades prior to the Boston abbreviation fad, the Choctaw had been in extensive negotiation with the U.S. government, after having fought alongside them at the

Battle of New Orleans The Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815, between the British Army under Major General Sir Edward Pakenham and the United States Army under Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson, roughly 5 miles (8 km) southeast of the Frenc ...

. Arguments for a more Southern origin for the word note the tendency of English to adopt loan words in

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

situations, as well as the ubiquity of the OK particle. Similar particles exist in native language groups distinct from Iroquoian ( Algonquian,

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

cf.
ekosi
).

West African

An early attestation of the particle 'kay' is found in a 1784 transcription of a North Carolina slave, who, seeking to avoid being flogged, explained being found asleep in the canoe he had been ordered to bring to a certain place to pick up a European exploring near his newly-purchased property : A West African (Mande and/or Bantu) etymology has been argued in scholarly sources, tracing the word back to word ''waw-kay'' or the

Mande Mande may refer to: * Mandé peoples of western Africa * Mande languages, their Niger-Congo languages * Manding languages, Manding, a term covering a subgroup of Mande peoples, and sometimes used for one of them, Mandinka people, Mandinka * Garo p ...

(aka "Mandinke" or "Mandingo") phrase ''o ke''. David Dalby first made the claim that the particle ''OK'' could have African origins in the 1969 Hans Wolff Memorial Lecture. His argument was reprinted in various newspaper articles between 1969 and 1971. This suggestion has also been mentioned by Joseph Holloway, who argued in the 1993 book ''The African Heritage of American English'' (co-written with a retired missionary) that various West African languages have near-homophone discourse markers with meanings such as "yes indeed" or which serve as part of the back-channeling repertoire. Frederic Cassidy challenged Dalby's claims, asserting that there is no documentary evidence that any of these African-language words had any causal link with its use in the American press. The West African hypothesis had not been accepted by 1981 by any etymologists,Lighter, Jonathon, (1994). ''The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang,'' 708. yet has since appeared in scholarly sources published by linguists and non-linguists alike.LINGUIST List 4.705
14 September 1993.

Alternative etymologies

A large number of origins have been proposed. Some of them are thought to fall into the category of

folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

and are proposed based merely on apparent similarity between ''OK'' 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 Ulster Scots, may refer to: * Ulster Scots people * Ulster Scots dialect Ulster Scots or Ulster-Scots (), also known as Ulster Scotch and Ullans, is the dialect (whose proponents assert is a dialect of Scots language, Scots) spoken in parts ...

(Scots-Irish) immigrants to North America, of the common Scots phrase ''och aye'' ("oh yes"). * A borrowing of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

phrase (), meaning "all good".

Early history in print

identifies the earliest known use of ''O.K.'' in print as 1839, in the edition of 23 March of the ''

Boston Morning Post ''The Boston Post'' was a daily newspaper in New England for over a hundred years before its final shutdown in 1956. The ''Post'' was founded in November 1831 by two prominent Boston businessmen, Charles G. Greene and William Beals. Edwin Groz ...

''. 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 ''OK'', complete with gloss: Read gives a number of subsequent appearances in print. Seven instances were accompanied with glosses that were 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. Various claims of earlier usage have been made. For example, it was claimed that the phrase appeared in a 1790 court record from

Sumner County, Tennessee Sumner County is a county located on the central northern border of Tennessee in the United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 196,281. Its county seat is Gallatin, and its most populous city is Hendersonville. T ...

, discovered in 1859 by a

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

historian named Albigence Waldo Putnam, in which

apparently said "proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for a Negro man, which was O.K.". The lawyer who successfully argued many Indian rights claims,

Felix S. Cohen Felix Solomon Cohen (July 3, 1907 – October 19, 1953) was an American lawyer and scholar who made a lasting mark on legal philosophy and fundamentally shaped federal Indian law and policy. Biography Felix S. Cohen was born in Manhattan, New Y ...

, supported the Jacksonian popularization of the term based on its Choctaw origin: David Dalby brought up a 1941 reference dating the term to 1815. The apparent notation "we arrived ok" appears in the hand-written diary of William Richardson traveling from Boston to New Orleans about a month after the

. However, Frederic Cassidy asserts that he personally tracked down this diary, writing: Similarly,

H. L. Mencken Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, ...

, 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 (following Read) 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 ndsome' 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 records a black slave 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:

Variations

Whether this word is printed as OK, Ok, 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 ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' (''CMOS'') is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 18 editions (the most recent in 2024) have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publ ...

'' and ''

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage ''The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's Most Authoritative Newspaper'' is a style guide first published in 1950 by editors at the newspaper and revised in 1974, 1999 ...

'' provide no consensus. Whilst most variants have descended from the root "OK", "okay" predominates in edited English as it permits easier modification (e.g. by pluralising).

International usage

}, which means "confirm" or "confirmed". In

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, ''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 (similar to English's "Alright, cool"), as well as the somewhat tongue-in-cheek yes/no construction "O不OK?" (O bù OK?), "Is it OK or not?", again adopting the term into Chinese grammar. , - ,

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

, oukej , Pronounced as the English ''OK''. When written ''OK'', it is pronounced :ka: Neither version recognized as official. Registered since the 1940s. , - , Danish , okay, OK �ʊ̯kʰɛɪ̯ ːˀ kʰɔːˀ, Appears from the 1930s. Pronunciation can be reduced and both vowels may become monophthongs. There is a difference in meaning between stress on first or last syllable. , - ,

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

, oké , ''oke'', ''ok'' and ''okay'' are also used, but are less common in the formal written language. , - ,

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

, o kej , The word is pronounced with stress on the second syllable. , - ,

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

, okei , ''Okei'' is the most common form, but others include ''okk'', ''okoo'', ''oki'', ''okas'', ''okeika'' and reduplicated versions. , - , Faroese , ókey �uˈkɛɪ, Possibly loaned in the 1940s as a result of the

British occupation of the Faroe Islands Operation Valentine, the British occupation of the Faroe Islands during the Second World War, was implemented immediately following Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of metropolitan Denmark and Norway. It was a small component of the ...

or through Danish. , - , Filipino , okay , Especially in the phrase ''okay lang'' 'it's okay'. , - , Finnish , 'OK'', ''okei'' keɪ ukeɪ okoo, Used since the 1930s. Used as part of conversational transition and closing, to signal acceptance of a directive, and to respond to sharing of information. , - ,

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

, oké , , - ,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, O.K., o.k., okay wkeɪ �ˈkeː ˈkeː, Used to mark understanding, agreement, closing and transition. , - ,

, OK, οκ

cei CEI may refer to: Organizations * Central European Initiative, a forum of regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe * Clean Energy Institute, a renewable energy research institute at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington, ...

k, , - ,

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...

, או קיי , Common as equivalent to the Hebrew word בסדר 'seder('adequate', 'in order'). , - , Hungarian , oké , , - , Icelandic , ókei , , - ,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, ok, oke, or okey , Sometimes using with suffix "lah": oklah, okelah. in chatting on social media sometimes indonesians only type "oklh" to minimalize time to type. , - ,

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, オーケー (), オッケー () , Early records include a song from 1930 and a novel in 1951. The word has a high-low tone. Also used in a reduplicated form. , - ,

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

, 오케이 /okʰei/ , Occurs in newspapers, magazines and novels from the 1920s. The word is found in a 1937 loanword dictionary. , - , Latvian , okej , ''ok'' also used, but considered to be a part of more colloquial internet language. , - ,

Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Macedonia * Mac ...

, okej , , - , Malay , OK , Frequently used with the emphatic suffix "lah": OK-lah. , - , Maldivian , Okay , Used in different ways, often used to agree with something, more often used while departing from a gathering "Okay Dahnee/Kendee." , - ,

Maltese Maltese may refer to: * Someone or something of, from, or related to Malta * Maltese alphabet * Maltese cuisine * Maltese culture * Maltese language, the Semitic language spoken by Maltese people * Maltese people, people from Malta or of Maltese ...

, owkej , Pronounced as the English ''OK''. , - , Norwegian , OK, ok keɪor ko, ''Okei'' and ''oukei'' are also commonly used written or spoken. , - ,

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

, okej , The most frequent form is ''okej'', but others are ''oki'', ''oka'', ''okidok'', ''okejka'' and ''okejos''. , - , Portuguese , OK, oquei , , - ,

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

, окей �ˈkʲeɪ̯ ок k, There are many variations such as ''оке'', ''оки'' and ''океюшки''. Also used for conversation closure. , - ,

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

, okej , , - ,

Singlish Singlish (a portmanteau of ''Singapore'' and '' English''), formally known as Colloquial Singaporean English, is an English-based creole language originating in Singapore. Singlish arose out of a situation of prolonged language contact betwe ...

, OK , ''OK'' is often used with suffixes used such as ''OK lor'', ''OK lah'', ''OK meh'', ''OK leh'', which are used in different occasions. , - , Slovak , oukej, okej, OK ʊkeɪ :ka:, , - , Slovene , okej, okay , , - ,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, okey , Used in Spain in the 1980s. Also part of the phrase . , - ,

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, okej , , - , Thai , โอเค , Pronounced "o khe". , - , Turkish , okey , Has a secondary meaning referring to the game ''

Okey ''Okey'' () is a tile-based game, popular in Turkey, of the rummy family. The aim of the game is to score points against the opposing players by collecting certain groups of tiles. It is usually played with four players, but can also be played ...

'', from a company that used the word as its name in the 1960s. , - ,

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

, OK , , - ,

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

, ô-kê , Used in

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

; ''okey'' also used, but ''ok'' more commonly.

Gesture

In the United States and much of Europe a related

gesture A gesture is a form of nonverbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or othe ...

is made by touching the index finger with the thumb (forming a rough circle) and raising of the remaining fingers.Armstrong, Nancy & Melissa Wagner. (2003) ''Field Guide to Gestures: How to Identify and Interpret Virtually Every Gesture Known to Man.'' Philadelphia: Quirk Books. It is not known whether the gesture is derived from the expression, or if the gesture appeared first. The gesture was popularized in the United States in 1840 as a symbol to support then-presidential candidate and incumbent vice president 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, some offensive, others devotional.Dangerous Body Language Abroad
, by Matthew Link. Posted 26 July 2010 01:00 PM. Retrieved on 17 November 2012

Computers

''OK'' is used to label

buttons A button is a fastener that joins two pieces of fabric together by slipping through a loop or by sliding through a buttonhole. In modern clothing and fashion design, buttons are commonly made of plastic but also may be made of metal, wood, o ...

in modal dialog boxes such as

error message An error message is the information displayed when an unforeseen problem occurs, usually on a computer or other device. Modern operating systems with graphical user interfaces, often display error messages using dialog boxes. Error messages are us ...

s or print dialogs, indicating that the user can press the button to accept the contents of the dialog box and continue. When the dialog box contains only one button, it is almost always labeled ''OK''. When there are two buttons, they are most commonly labeled ''OK'' and ''Cancel''. ''OK'' is commonly rendered in

upper case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''#Majuscule, majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally ''#Minuscule, minuscule'') in the written representation of certain langua ...

and without punctuation: ''OK'', rather than ''O.K. or'' ''Okay.'' The ''OK'' button can probably be traced to user interface research done for the

Apple Lisa Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, produced from January 19, 1983, to August 1, 1986, and succeeded by Macintosh. It is generally considered the first mass-market personal computer operable through a graphical user interface (GUI). I ...

. The

Forth Forth or FORTH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''forth'' magazine, an Internet magazine * ''Forth'' (album), by The Verve, 2008 * ''Forth'', a 2011 album by Proto-Kaw * Radio Forth, a group of independent local radio stations in Scotl ...

programming language prints ''ok'' when ready to accept input from the keyboard. This prompt is used on

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

, and other computers with the Forth-based Open Firmware (OpenBoot). The appearance of ''ok'' in inappropriate contexts is the subject of some humor. In the

Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

(HTTP), upon which the World Wide Web is based, a successful response from the server is defined as ''OK'' (with the numerical code

200 Year 200 ( CC) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Severus and Victorinus (or, less frequently, year 953 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 200 for this y ...

as specified in RFC 2616). The

Session Initiation Protocol The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telepho ...

also defines a response, ''200 OK'', which conveys success for most requests (RFC 3261). Some

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s, including those based on

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

, display boot progress on successive lines on-screen, which include '' nbsp;OK '.

In Unicode

Several

Unicode character The Unicode Consortium and the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/ WG 2 jointly collaborate on the list of the characters in the Universal Coded Character Set. The Universal Coded Character Set, most commonly called the Universal Character Set ( UCS, official ...

s are related to visual renderings of OK: * * * * *

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

Why we say "OK"
- Vox News produced video

NPR: The Origin of OK (audio)

BBC: How 'OK' took over the world
Retrieved 18 February 2011. {{Authority control American English words English words Interjections Slang Martin Van Buren