Veda #55 : OK

Day 55
"What is OK?and why do people understand it as good meaning?"


Most people all over the world, even if they do not understand English, understand and use the American expression “OK.” Nobody knows for sure exactly where or when that expression became part of our language, but there are several possible sources that are accepted.

The earliest claimed usage of okay is a 1790 court record from Sumner County, Tennessee, discovered in 1859 by a Tennessee historian named Albigence Waldo Putnam, in which Andrew Jackson apparently said:
"proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for a Negro man, which was O.K."
However, the record is hand-written rather than printed, and James Parton's 1860 biography of Jackson suggested that it is really a poorly written "O.R.," which was the abbreviation used for "Ordered Recorded".

Some believe that “OK” may have come from the Choctaw Indian word okeh, which means “it is so, and no other way". Others believe that the expression originated with Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States. Jackson was considered one of the least educated of all the American presidents, having left school at the age of 13 to fight in the Revolutionary War. The story goes that Jackson thought “OK” was an abbreviation of “Oll Kurrect,” which was his spelling of “All Correct.”

In the United States and much of Europe a related gesture is made by touching the index finger with the thumb (forming a rough circle) and raising of the remaining fingers (to form a 'K')