OK Day – March 23, 2027

History of OK Day

We can’t say for sure when this word originated. A number of historians believe ‘okay’ became a part of the English language largely due to an editing prank, while there are some who think it might have come from a clever political campaign slogan. There are also doubts that similar words from languages like French, Haitian, Spanish, and even the Native American ‘Choctaw’ were the inspiration behind this word.

What we do know is that this word first appeared in print when an enterprising editor from the Boston Morning Post took a satirical jab at his counterpart. He deliberately created a funny misspelling of ‘all correct’ — ‘oll korrect’ — to form the abbreviation ‘O.K.’ And then, this slang word was suddenly a part of the American language, although it hadn’t quite reached uber-popular status yet.

The reason so many people mistakenly believe ‘OK’ was the result of a political slogan comes now, at this time in history. The 1840 presidential candidate Martin Van Buren used a slogan, ‘Vote for OK,’ which gave this world a brighter stage to shine on. The ‘OK’ used here, however, was actually Van Buren’s nickname ‘Old Kinderhook,’ which referred to his hometown of Kinderhook, New York. His opponents in this race – the Whigs – took this a step further, slandering Van Buren’s mentor, Andrew Jackson, claiming that he used ‘OK’ instead of ‘all correct’ because he couldn’t spell. They also alleged he signed documents this way for the same reason. These untrue accusations tanked Van Buren’s reelection campaign but worked wonders for the popularity of the word itself. Over the next few decades, documents were signed with an ‘OK’ to indicate they were correct, and even telegrams contained this slang word, even as many prominent writers spurned its usage. But the rise of this word could not be stopped, and it eventually gained global recognition.

American etymologist Allen Walker Read was just as fascinated by this word as the rest of the world and researched all the stories behind its origin. He landed on the 1839 Boston Morning Post article as the birthplace of ‘OK.’ He unveiled his findings over a series of articles released between 1963 and 1964. While people still hotly debate these findings, one thing we can all agree on — OK is here to stay, and we are absolutely okay with that.