“On March 23, 1839, the initials “O.K.” are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll korrect,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.

During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as “kewl” for “cool” or “DZ” for “these,” the “in crowd” of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included “KY” for “No use” (“know yuse”), “KG” for “No go” (“Know go”), and “OW” for all right (“oll wright”). …”

https://www.history.com/this-d...-national-vernacular

Interesting. Thx for posting.

And I always thought it was spelled "okay".

Seems acceptable.

KY - is a state or jelly.

I had read that it stemmed from the slang/dialect of the day from "Oll Korrect" or "Ole Kurreck".

I read a book last year about a guy who fell off a cliff in the woods of Pennsylvania and hit his head and when he woke up he had been transported into another reality where the Black Death had killed off most of Europe in the 1600's and travel had been cut off to the New World and the colonies there had never had an Industrial Revolution and it was still basically the 1600's in dress and language and customs even though it as 2016. When he spoke to people with "OK", no one knew what he was trying to say and he quickly had to adapt.

It was further popularized during the election of 1840, right after this, when supporters of Martin Van Buren, "Old Kinderhook" himself, used it in rallies and advertising with the same general meaning as that in the OP.

https://www.npr.org/2006/03/09...tin-van-buren-was-ok

Van Buren supposedly used "OK" for his nickname to sign off on documents, popularizing the term even more.

https://www.nationalguard.mil/...o-gave-the-world-ok/

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I had read that it stemmed from the slang/dialect of the day from "Oll Korrect" or "Ole Kurreck".
<snip>

Yeah. From my OP:
‘Meant as an abbreviation for “oll korrect,”’

OK...What took so long?

Ok is my wife's name.

AI overview:
Yes, the word "OK" is used in many languages, including:
* French: "Oké"
* German: "O.K.", "o.k.", "okay"
* Greek: "OK", "οκ"
* Modern Hebrew: "או קיי"
* Arabic: "حسناً"
* Chinese: "好的！"
* Croatian: "okej!"
* Czech: "ok!"
* Danish: "okay"
* Dutch: "oké!"
* European Spanish: "¡vale!"
* Finnish: "okei!"
* Italian: "okay!"
* Japanese: "オーケー！"
* Korean: "좋아!"
* Norwegian: "okay!"
* Polish: "OK, dobra!"
* Portuguese: "está bem!"
* Romanian: "OK!"
* Russian: "хорошо!"
* Latin American Spanish: "¡okey!"
* Swedish: "okej!"
* Thai: "ตกลง, ย่อมได้"
* Turkish: "okey!"
* Ukrainian: "гаразд"
* Vietnamese: "tốt!" 


I always thought it was short for, "Okie Dokie".

And, in the age of text messaging laziness, it has shortened to "K". Guess that makes sense, because you surely don't want to be distracted too much thumbing out "OK" while driving.