Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1839, only survivor of a slang fad in Boston and New York c.1838-9 for abbreviations of common phrases with deliberate, jocular misspellings (such as K.G. for "no go," as if spelled "know go;" N.C. for "'nuff ced;" K.Y. for "know yuse"). In the case of O.K., the abbreviation is of "oll korrect."\n
\nProbably further popularized by use as an election slogan by the O.K. Club, New York boosters of Democratic president Martin Van Buren's 1840 re-election bid, in allusion to his nickname Old Kinderhook, from his birth in the N.Y. village of Kinderhook. Van Buren lost, the word stuck, in part because it filled a need for a quick way to write an approval on a document, bill, etc. Spelled out as okeh, 1919, by Woodrow Wilson, on assumption that it represented Choctaw okeh "it is so" (a theory which lacks historical documentation); this was ousted quickly by okay after the appearance of that form in 1929. Greek immigrants to America who returned home early 20c. having picked up U.S. speech mannerisms were known in Greece as okay-boys, among other things.\n
\nThe noun is first attested 1841; the verb 1888. Okey-doke is student slang first attested 1932.
Wiktionary
a. (context informal English) (alternative case form of OK English)
WordNet
adj. being satisfactory or in satisfactory condition; "an all-right movie"; "the passengers were shaken up but are all right"; "is everything all right?"; "everything's fine"; "things are okay"; "dinner and the movies had been fine"; "another minute I'd have been fine" [syn: all right, fine, o.k., okay, hunky-dory]
Wikipedia
"OK" (; also spelled "okay", "ok") denotes approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment. "OK", as an adjective, can also express acknowledgment without approval. "OK" has frequently turned up as a loanword in many other languages.
As an adjective, "OK" means "adequate", "acceptable" ("this is OK to send out"), "mediocre" often in contrast to "good" ("the food was OK"); it also functions as an adverb in this sense. As an interjection, it can denote compliance ("OK, I will do that"), or agreement ("OK, that is fine"). It can also mean "assent" when it is used either as a noun ("the boss gave his OK to the purchase") or, more colloquially, as a verb ("the boss OKed the purchase"). As a versatile discourse marker or back-channeling item, it can also be used with appropriate voice tone to show doubt or to seek confirmation ("OK?" or "Is that OK?").
OK is a word expressing approval or assent.
OK may also refer to:
- A-ok, a circular hand sign
The OK Dinghy is an international class sailing dinghy, designed by Knud Olsen in 1956.
The hand gesture performed by connecting the thumb and index finger into a circle (the O), and holding the other fingers straight or relaxed in the air, is a commonly used form of nonverbal communication. In many parts of the world, it is synonymous with the word OK, denoting approval, agreement, or that all is well. In other contexts or cultures, this same gesture may have different meanings or connotations, including negative or offensive ones.
Unicode symbol U+1F44C (????) represents this gesture.
OK is the debut release of tabla player and music producer Talvin Singh, and it was nine months in the making. The title was chosen because of the universality of the word "OK", which can be understood almost anywhere in the world. It is mostly a reinterpretation of Indian classical music with flute, sitar, and tabla. The album won him the Mercury Music Prize for 1999, but had sold only 90,000 copies in the United Kingdom as of September 2011, charting at #41, making it one of the smallest sellers in the award's history.
"OK" is the second single by British R&B collective Big Brovaz. It was also the second single taken from their debut album Nu-Flow, released in late 2002. The album was re-released two weeks after the release of "OK" with the "OK" radio edit added and bonus tracks.
"OK" became Big Brovaz' second UK top-ten hit, peaking at number seven and spending nine weeks inside the top seventy-five of the UK Singles Chart. Despite "Nu Flow" being a hit in Australia, "OK" was a commercial failure and their smallest hit there, peaking at a lowly number sixty-four.
Ok (1198m) is a shield volcano in Iceland, to the west of Langjökull. It erupted during interglacials in the Pleistocene. The glacier on top is thought to have disappeared.
OK is Chang Chen-yue's ninth studio album. It was released in 2007.
"OK" is a song by Farin Urlaub. It's the third single and sixth track from his debut album Endlich Urlaub!. It's a hate song. It was originally meant for Die Ärzte. It's also one of the heaviest songs on the album.
Ok, sometimes spelled Oak or Ock, is an uncommon Korean family name, a single-syllable Korean given name, and an element in some two-syllable Korean given names. It is usually written with a hanja meaning "jade".
OK is the fifth full-length studio album from The Fall of Troy. It was released for free on the band's website on April 20.In May the same year, they released OK#2, featuring an alternative and more raw mix of OK, and like the original album it was also released for free. OK#3.1 and OK#3.2 are instrumental versions of both OK and OK#2, respectively, again both released for free on their website.
Usage examples of "ok".
OK, Chekov, clean that red gunk off and then well call Tram Bir and show him another Beshwa miracle.
Leslie Oker was about as impulsive as a two-toed sloth, and rather less effeminate than a tomcat.
Brunswick belongs almost entirely to the basin of the river Weser, into which the Oker, the Aller and the Leine, having their sources in the Harz, discharge their waters.
Germany, capital of the duchy of that name, situated in a fertile and undulating country, on the Oker, 37 m.
This little person concludes correctly that his parents are in fact not ok.
He went to the farm to give one of them some antitetanus jabs, and he said he loOKed them all over, and they were OK.
At the other extreme is the shy, withdrawn little boy whose 25,000 hours of tape recordings play in a cacophony of shrill supervision and criticism to the low, steady rhythm of not ok, not ok, not ok.
Center in Providence, in concave recesses along the Pizzitola tunnels between special entrance and Visitors' locker room, even in a specially enlarged and sensually-appointed locker next to the power forward's locker in the VLR, all prepared like the Brown cheerleaders and Pep Squad, who've been induced to do the game pantyless, electrolysized and splits-prone to help lend a pyrotechnic glandular atmosphere to the power forward's whole playing-environment prepared to make the penultimate sacrifice for squad, school, and influential members of the Brown Alumni Bruins Boosters Assoc. So that Gwendine O'Shay then switches back to Fackelmann and OKs the mammoth bet and point-spread, as like who wouldn't, with that kind of mole-reported fix in the works.
OK, she'd had no choice but to mention hersuspicions but maybe she could have played them down abit and saved herself the irritation of his paranoia.
He radioed an American plane going overhead, and we got a message that he's OK.
OK, tonight I'll drive to the animal shelter and break down the fence and kidnap the damn things.
OK, even with Opalexian's help, there was no cut and dried guarantee that all would go to plan, but there was no way I should take Panthera along.
Keep'm, give'm away, I don't care what you do with them, but get me a nice cold bottle of Dom Perignon right away, OK?
Every fifteen minutes or so Valerie would run down and see if they were OK, and finally she toOK them all to our suite of rooms and I gambled until four o’clock in the morning.
And Harry, her brother, who said about saving up for a motorbike so you could be first at interviews for really good jobs, and I thought, OK, Ill just stick it out for a week.