Where did the word 'OK' come from and when was it first used?

All over the world, people say "OK" to express agreement in casual conversation. For example: "Would you like to go for coffee this morning?", "OK".

This expression is very simple, fast, convenient both when speaking and typing, so it is commonly used by all ages. So what is the original meaning of the word "OK" and where does it come from?

The word "OK" is said to have originated in Boston, USA in 1839, as an abbreviation of "Oll Korrect" (a misspelling of "All Correct"), often used in language games.

Like today's youth, young urban intellectuals in America at that time also liked to create their own language. At first, they simply abbreviated and spelled words differently; then, wanting a more unique way of communicating, they decided to create internal language codes.

They deliberately misspell common phrases to create homophones, then take the first two letters to make a code. Many acronyms are formed by this wordplay: KC stands for "Knuff Ced" (enough said), OW for "Oll Wright" (all alright), KG for "Ko Go" (no go). Of these coded acronyms, the most famous is "OK".

The first appearance of “OK” in a media publication was in a newspaper articleBoston Morning Post1839. The reporter wanted to bring a little irony to his writing style, so instead of writing “all correct,” he wrote OK.

The word would have been lost to oblivion, but the re-election campaign of Martin van Buren (the 8th president of the United States) quickly turned “OK” into a common vocabulary in the press.

Martin van Buren used the nickname “Old Kinderhook” during his campaign. His supporters created a group called the “OK Club” with the slogan “Old Kinderhook was oll korrect”.

Soon after, this campaign was exploited by Martin van Buren's opponents to counterattack, parodying it with sarcastic phrases such as "Out of Kash" (out of cash) or "Orfull Katastrophe" (awful catastrophe).

In 1841, William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone (England) built a printing telegraph to send Moses codes to the other end of the wire. The Morse code system for telegraphy, first used around 1844, was designed to create indentations on a paper tape when it received an electric current. From the indentations on the paper, people began to decipher the alphabetic text.

Because of limited technology, characters are often abbreviated, short, easy to understand, and "OK" is used.

It was also thanks to the development of the telegraph that the word “OK” became popular throughout the world. “OK” became a word representing confirmation. In fact, during its development, this word gradually took on many other meanings such as consensus and agreement.

“OK” has also gradually become a global symbol, penetrating the spoken languages ​​of many different languages ​​around the world. In each culture, “OK” has a different form and pronunciation.

For example, in Norwegian, Icelandic or Finnish, this familiar phrase is written as “okei”. In Russian, Spanish, Turkish or Filipino, it is written as “okey”. “Oukej” is the Czech or Slovak spelling of the word.

In Vietnamese, “Ok” is still the most common way of writing, but today young people are writing it as "Oki", "Okie" or "Ukie" to convey a more polite, softer tone.

The brevity and versatility of "OK" makes it an easy word to remember and use in many contexts, from everyday life to work, especially in the age of the internet and social media, when people prefer concise communication.