It's OK

How many times a day does one in the United States say "OK"? Probably many more times than one would imagine. The British use it too, but I have never heard it as widely used there as it is in the U.S. In the U.S we say "OK" when we mean, "All right. I'm ready to go" or "Good, that's enough" or "Go ahead, you have my permission..." or "I agree." The "OK's" in those instances (and many others) are interjections--things that we say almost reflexively in everyday circumstances. Then, we sometimes use "OK" as a verb: "The boss will have to OK it", or as a noun: "We got the boss's OK to go ahead", or as an adjective: "It's OK to use that pan for baking." And also, we have buttons on our computers that say "OK", by which we tell them to go ahead with the settings we have chosen.

Languages other than English also have equivalents of "OK": in Spanish they say está bien ("it's well") and the French say d'accord ("of accord") and also ça va ("that goes"). However, having lived, worked, and traveled in countries where those languages are spoken, I have never heard any of them used as much as we use "OK". Usually they are used just as interjections: In Spanish: Está bien, eso es todo que necesito ("OK, that's all I need"); in French: D'accord, j'accepte votre prix ("OK, I accept your price") or Ça va, ça c'est tout dont j'ai besoin ("OK, that's all I need")

So, how did "OK" ever come to be? The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories says that it was trimmed down from "all correct." It goes on to say "...there was the abbreviation fad. Among the young and fashionable set in American cities in the late 1830's, the thing to do was to reduce phrases to initials...(also) there was the tradition of deliberate misspelling in humorous writing." It adds:

(OK) might well have passed into oblivion...had it not been for the presidential election of 1840. In that year the Tammany Democrats in New York created a Democratic O.K. Club. The O.K. in the name was derived from Old Kinderhook, after Kinderhook, New York, the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, the Democratic candidate...The campaign gave another boost to OK. A Whig journalist floated the story that OK was used by Andrew Jackson as standing for Ole Korrek (later oll korrect), which was supposed to be Jackson's spelling of all correct This was a reference to the presidential campaign of 1828 in which Jackson's bad spelling was a campaign issue.

Another reference source, the website Answers.com offers an explanation that "OK" originated from Andrew Jackson's liking a Choctaw Indian word, okeh ("it is so"). It goes on to say that, during the Battle of New Orleans against the British (in the War of 1812), Jackson asked Pushmataha, a leader of a Choctaw contingent that was fighting alongside the Americans, if the fight was going well for him, to which Jackson received the answer, "okeh." (The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories also mentions this possible origin.)

However it originated, "OK" is likely to be a linguistic workhorse in the U.S. for a long time.