The Origin of ‘OK’: How a Joke Abbreviation Conquered the World

The origin of OK is a joke that refused to die. In 1839, Boston newspapers were gripped by a fad for comic misspellings and abbreviations, and the Boston Morning Post printed “OK” as a playful twist on “all correct” — spelled “oll korrect.” Within a year, a presidential campaign carried it across America.

It is, by most accounts, the most recognized word on the planet. Astronauts say it, pilots say it, toddlers say it. It works as a yes, a shrug, a stamp of approval and a way to end an argument. Yet for decades nobody could say for sure where those two letters came from — and the answer, when a determined scholar finally pinned it down, turned out to be funnier than any of the guesses.

Where did OK first appear in print?

The trail starts in Boston in the late 1830s, when the city’s newspapers were locked in a friendly arms race of jokes. Editors and readers were obsessed with a particular game: take an everyday phrase, misspell it on purpose, and squash it into initials. “All right” became O.W. — “oll wright.” “No go” became K.G. — “know go.” It was the viral humor format of its day, the 1839 equivalent of a meme page.

On March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post joined in. In a whimsical item about a local club, the paper slipped in a line ending with the initials “o.k.” and spelled out the joke for its readers: o.k. — “oll korrect.” It was a throwaway gag, one of dozens the paper printed that spring. Nobody involved could have guessed that this particular pair of letters would outlive every newspaper in Boston.

We know this because of Allen Walker Read, a Columbia University scholar who spent years hunting the origin of OK through mountains of yellowing newspapers. Rival theories had piled up for a century — that it came from the Choctaw word “okeh,” from Greek sailors, from a Haitian port, from Andrew Jackson’s famously shaky spelling. Read’s research, published in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964, showed the Boston item was the earliest verifiable appearance in print, and that the long trail of usage afterward led straight back to it.

What is the true origin of OK — a joke, or a president?

If Boston invented OK, a presidential election made it famous. In 1840, President Martin Van Buren was running for re-election, and his supporters needed a slogan. Van Buren hailed from Kinderhook, New York, and went by the nickname “Old Kinderhook” — initials: O.K. His backers formed “OK Clubs” in cities across the country, marched under OK banners, and turned the two letters into the most recognizable brand in American politics that year.

The timing was perfect. The Boston joke was barely a year old, still fresh in readers’ minds, and the campaign gave it a second, much louder meaning. Van Buren’s opponents fought back with jokes of their own. Whig newspapers claimed the initials really belonged to Andrew Jackson, Van Buren’s mentor, and snickered that Jackson spelled so badly he marked documents “O.K.” for “ole kurrek.” It was pure campaign mockery — but it spread the letters even further. Whatever voters made of it in 1840, the origin of OK was already a year old; the campaign amplified a joke it did not create.

Van Buren lost the election of 1840 to William Henry Harrison, and the OK Clubs disbanded. But the word refused to follow its president into retirement, because by then it had escaped politics entirely. It was simply too useful to give up.

How did a Boston joke conquer the world?

Through the rest of the 1800s, OK rode every new communication technology America invented. Telegraph operators loved it: two letters, quick to send and almost impossible to garble. Businessmen stamped it on documents to mean “approved.” Railroad crews, soldiers and settlers carried it west, and by the end of the century it had worked its way from slang into standard American English — noun, verb, adjective and all-purpose answer in one.

The 20th century took it global. American soldiers carried OK across Europe and the Pacific in two world wars, and it often became the first English word exchanged between GIs and locals. In 1961 it went higher still: NASA’s Mercury program popularized “A-OK,” the emphatic version used to report that everything was, emphatically, all correct. From a Boston newsroom to mission control in just over 120 years — which is why the origin of OK may be the best two-letter story in the English language.

Today OK is understood on every continent, in languages that share almost nothing else with English. It has been spelled “okay,” tapped out in Morse code, flashed as a hand sign, and clicked a billion times as the world’s most agreeable button. Few words travel this well. Even fewer started as a punchline.

More word origins: why we say goodbye, where breakfast got its name, and the origin of quarantine.

OK’s journey at a glance

Year	Milestone
1839	Boston Morning Post prints “o.k.” for “oll korrect”
1840	Van Buren’s “OK Clubs” carry OK across America
1961	NASA’s Mercury program popularizes “A-OK”
1963–1964	Allen Walker Read publishes the research pinning OK to the 1839 Boston item.

Frequently asked questions

What does OK actually stand for?

It stands for “oll korrect,” a deliberately wrong spelling of “all correct.” Boston’s 1839 abbreviation fad ran on exactly this kind of joke — spell it wrong, shorten it, and let readers feel clever for getting it.

Did Martin Van Buren invent OK?

No. Van Buren’s “Old Kinderhook” nickname and his supporters’ OK Clubs turned OK into a national catchphrase during the 1840 election, but the abbreviation had already appeared in the Boston Morning Post in March 1839, a year earlier.

Isn’t OK from the Choctaw word “okeh”?

That is the most respectable of the rival theories. Choctaw does have a word “okeh,” meaning roughly “it is so,” and President Woodrow Wilson liked the theory so much that he spelled the word “okeh.” But Read’s newspaper evidence for the 1839 Boston coinage is earlier, documented, and traces a clear path of spread — which is why most linguists accept it.

Why do we also spell it “okay”?

“Okay” is simply OK dressed up as a regular word — a spelling that matches how the letters sound. It appeared in print within a few years of OK itself, and today it is the more common spelling in books and formal writing, while OK still rules in texts, cockpits and control rooms.