Where did okay come from? It began as a joke abbreviation, OK for “oll korrect”, printed in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, then spread through Martin Van Buren’s 1840 campaign. Rival theories fail against the dated evidence.
This is one of several explanations in our collection on the origin of common phrases. The sections below follow the word in order: the 1839 printing, the newspaper craze around it, the political campaign that gave it momentum, and the theories that do not hold up.
The 1839 Boston Morning Post citation
OK first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, as NPR’s account of the word’s history reports. Allen Walker Read, the scholar who traced it, found that OK was printed that day as an abbreviation for “oll korrect”, according to Smithsonian magazine. The wording matters. The letters stood for a deliberately comic respelling, not for a plain phrase.
An abbreviation craze in New England
The joke was not an isolated one. History.com describes an abbreviation craze that swept 19th-century America, and it ties the fashion to New England in the late 1830s. Read himself said of the practice in 1839 New England, “It might well be called a craze,” as Smithsonian magazine quotes him.
So the 1830s abbreviation fad is documented, and OK belongs to it. Most fads of this kind faded. OK is the one that stuck, and the rest of the story explains why.
What the printing shows
The Boston Morning Post’s editor in 1839 was Charles Gordon Greene, who, History.com notes, often wrote witticisms. The first OK appeared in a satirical article about the editorial practices of the Providence Journal. The setting was newspaper banter aimed at a rival paper, not everyday speech. That is why the later spread needs its own explanation.
How OK travelled through 1839 newspapers
OK left Boston quickly. By July 1839 it appeared in a paragraph written by the editor of The Baltimore Sun, and by the end of the year it had also shown up in the Boston Evening Transcript. Each appearance is a dated printing, which is the kind of evidence a word history needs.
| Date | Where OK appears | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| March 23, 1839 | Boston Morning Post | The first appearance in print, as a joke abbreviation |
| July 1839 | A paragraph by the editor of The Baltimore Sun | The word had left Boston and was used by an editor elsewhere |
| End of 1839 | Boston Evening Transcript | Other newspapers were now carrying the abbreviation |
| 1840 | Martin Van Buren’s reelection campaign | A political use that brought the word into its own |
The dates come from NPR’s history of OK and History.com’s account of its birth.
In practice, the table sets the test for any origin story. A claim has to account for a printed OK in 1839, and a story that cannot do that is a tale, not an origin.
Martin Van Buren and the 1840 campaign
It was Martin Van Buren’s reelection campaign that, in NPR’s words, “really brought the word into its own”. A joke abbreviation from 1839 became a slogan in 1840, and the reason is a coincidence of letters.
Old Kinderhook
O.K. lined up with a nickname attached to Van Buren, Old Kinderhook, drawn from Kinderhook, New York, as NPR explains. The existing abbreviation therefore gave his supporters a ready-made slogan. For readers weighing the Old Kinderhook claim, the safest reading is that the nickname boosted a word already in print rather than creating it.
OK Clubs and signatures
According to Smithsonian magazine, the campaign set up OK Clubs to influence voters. NPR adds that Van Buren even began signing documents with O.K. during the campaign. Both details show OK being used on purpose as a political label, which helps explain why a Boston joke reached a national audience.
The effort did not win him the presidency, since Harrison won the 1840 election. As History.com puts it, “but so did OK.” The word outlasted the campaign that popularized it.
Testing the rival theories
Several other origins were once widely repeated. Tested against the 1839 printing, none holds up.
- Choctaw okeh. President Woodrow Wilson thought OK evolved from a Choctaw word that he spelled okeh, History.com reports. NPR describes the Choctaw origin as a widely held belief at one time that ultimately proved wrong. Wilson’s idea came in the early 20th century, long after the 1839 citation, and it cannot explain why OK appeared as “oll korrect” in a newspaper joke.
- German Oberst Kommandant. One theory held that the word came from an abbreviation of Oberst Kommandant, as Smithsonian magazine recounts.
- French Aux Cayes. Another claim was that OK came from the pronunciation of Aux Cayes, a port in Haiti.
- Orrin Kendall’s army biscuit. History.com describes a theory based on the manufacturer of a popular army biscuit, Orrin Kendall, tied to the Civil War. A Civil War biscuit cannot explain a word already in print before that conflict.
What these stories share is a missing citation. Each is a plausible-sounding source word with no dated printing behind it. Readers who enjoy this kind of checking can apply the same method to the origin of rule of thumb, another expression surrounded by popular explanations.
How Allen Walker Read settled the question
Allen Walker Read was a Columbia University English professor who set out in the 1960s to trace OK, NPR relates. By the mid-1960s, after systematically disproving earlier theories about the origins of OK, he had located the Boston Morning Post printing, as Smithsonian magazine tells it.
His method is the lesson. Instead of arguing which source word sounds best, he checked which printed evidence came earliest. A theory built on a guess about speech can be neither proved nor disproved, whereas a dated citation can be checked by anyone.
OK in the 20th century
OK did not stay a newspaper joke or a campaign slogan. Its spread in the 20th century is linked to American soldiers and the two world wars, according to NPR’s reporting on the word. Military contact carried it into everyday speech well beyond the places where the 1830s abbreviation craze had flourished.
The result is a word with an unusually well-dated beginning and a surprisingly long afterlife. Another everyday custom with a story to unpick is explained in why do we say toast when we raise a glass.
Frequently asked questions
Did Andrew Jackson start OK by misspelling “all correct”?
No. During the 1840 campaign, some newspapers claimed OK came from a spelling blunder by Jackson, who supposedly signed “O.K.” on his presidential papers to indicate approval. The story circulated at the time, but the documented first printing is the 1839 Boston Morning Post citation.
Was OK used during the Apollo 11 moon landing?
Yes. NPR cites a July 1969 exchange in which the word is spoken in lunar communication: “OK, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.”
Does OK stand for Old Kinderhook?
Not originally. The nickname fit the letters and made OK a useful slogan for Van Buren in 1840, but the abbreviation was already in print as “oll korrect” in 1839.
