Okeh, OK, or okay?
The History and Proper Use of the Word “OK”
Happy May, everyone, and welcome to another collaboration between Missing Pieces and Strike-Through. This time, we’re delving into the history and proper use of the word “OK.” While the word was not invented during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (GAPE), one of the most popular—albeit incorrect—origin theories emerged in 1885.
Etymologist and lexicographer Allen Walker Read traced the origin of the word back to a joke in a 1839 Boston newspaper where “o.k.” stood for “oll korrect.” Since this origin wasn’t widely known, as the word “OK” became more popular in the 1800s, a plethora of theories appeared, including the Choctaw theory posited in 1885.
The theory, proposed by University of Alabama professor of English W. S. Wyman in the Magazine of American History, suggested that “OK” came from the Choctaw word “okeh” or “oke.” Wyman believed that President Andrew Jackson first heard the word during his interactions with Choctaw Nation when he participated in trading expeditions up and down the Mississippi River and then later began using “OK” himself.
The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, vol. 14, July–December 1885
Wyman’s theory was quickly adopted, and the putative origin word “okeh” was so popular that it even became common parlance in American English; even Arrow collars and phonograph records had the word “okeh” printed on them. Moreover, the Century and Merriam-Webster dictionaries published in 1909 both attributed the origin of the word “OK” to the Choctaw word “okeh.”
President Woodrow Wilson even always wrote “okeh” instead of “OK” on documents and memoranda because, according to him, “‘o.k.’ is wrong.” One journal article from 1919 even suggested that “Okeh, Woodrow Wilson” or the more common “Okeh, W. W.” that Wilson often signed on documents as president might even become more popular than President Theodore Roosevelt’s well-known salutation, “Delighted!”
The Industrial School Journal, January 1919
The style guidance is as murky as the history of “OK.”
The Chicago Manual of Style does not offer a definitive judgment on how the word should be spelled, capitalized, or punctuated, and in fact both “okay” and “OK” occur in the text of the seventeenth (the most up-to-date) version of the manual.
“OK” shows up a handful of times—for instance, we are told that “a comma should follow an introductory yes, no, OK, well, and the like” (6.34). Later on, “okay” appears once: “It is okay, however, to collect more data than you will use in your citations” (14.5).
I personally favor “OK” because I accept the “oll korrect” origin story and think of the term as an abbreviation, with a capital O standing for “oll” and a capital K standing for “korrect.” An abbreviation where the term is “read as a series of letters” (i.e., you say or read each letter individually—“IRS,” “US,” etc.) is called an “initialism,” and “initialisms tend to appear in all capital letters” (10.2; 10.6).
I also prefer “OK” because The AP Stylebook offers a clear ruling: “Do not use okay.” “OK” is the only acceptable rendition if you’re following AP.
Whether you write it as “Ok,” “o.k.,” “ok,” “okay,” “O.K.,” or “OK,” remember one of the main edicts of polished prose: be consistent.
Stirring up the heavy dough of English, while hoping it will turn out OK when it rises,
Rebekah Slonim and Rachel Lane
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