OK

by Metcalf, Allan;

The Intelligent Choctaw

  W. S. Wyman of the University of Alabama, a professor of English, in 1885 and 1894 published articles arguing that the true origin of OK was the Choctaw language. This theory too involves Andrew Jackson but gives him a more dignified reason for choosing to use OK. Wyman writes in his 1894 article,

  It is, however, probably true that General Jackson did indorse with the symbols O. K. public documents which he approved. General Jackson was no scholar, it is true, but he was not so ignorant as to think that “all correct” was spelled “oll korrect.”

  If you will examine the autograph letters of General Jackson now in the archives of the Tennessee Historical Society, you will find that he could write fairly for a man who had small educational advantages in early life.

  The true explanation of O. K. is probably as follows: There is a tradition among the intelligent Choctaws of the old stock who once lived in Mississippi that General Jackson borrowed the expression O. K. from the Choctaw language.

  The Choctaws and the Chickasaws speak the same tongue. In the language of these two peoples there is no copulative verb that corresponds to “be” in English (esse in Latin). A substitute for this is found in the emphatic word okéh, which ends every assertion in Choctaw. An example will illustrate this.

  The English sentence, “The Choctaw Indian is a good fellow,” would be in Choctaw, Hattak uppeh hoomah chahtah achookmah okéh, Man body red Choctaw good it-is-all-so. Here okéh serves as the verb of assertion. It means, “It is true,” “It is so,” “It is all right,” etc.

  General Jackson was frequently among the Choctaws and Chickasaws before he became famous. He must have heard this expression often.

  He probably adopted it in early life as a very expressive kind of slang, and used it after he became President as a private symbol (O. K.) to indicate approval.…

  This theory of the origin of O. K. is, if not true, at least well invented, as the Italians say.

  Professor Wyman then goes on to accept the authenticity of the 1790 document, explaining, “It is highly probable that this O. K. in the record of the Sumner County Court is the very expression used by Jackson to signify that the bill of sale was ‘all right.’” We now know that was all wrong.

  Another scholar, Charles P. G. Scott, soon afterward added to Wyman’s explanation by asserting, “It seems probable that the expression came into white men’s notice in the Indian jargon known in the 18th century and later as the ‘Mobile’ or ‘Mobilian trade language,’ sometimes as the ‘Chickasaw trade language,’ the Chickasaw being a dialect of the Choctaw.” Conveniently, no trace remains of that language.

  Attractive as the Choctaw explanation is, there is no evidence to support it, not even the 1790 document that now has been disproved. To this day there is not a scrap of actual evidence that OK had anything to do with Andrew Jackson.

  But the Choctaw explanation was important all the same. It appealed to scholars, in particular to the only Ph.D. who has ever served as president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Without question, OK was a useful mark to make on a document, but it would hardly be proper for a highly educated man to employ a known misspelling. The Choctaw was a way out.

  So President Wilson embraced the opportunity to give what he assumed was proper historical respect to OK. He marked his approval of documents not with OK but with okeh.

  During Wilson’s terms in office, that origin was also embraced, or at least alluded to, by the OKeh label of phonograph records (begun in 1915) and by an Okeh style of Arrow collars (begun in 1919).

  OKeh Phonograph Record Label

  Perhaps thanks to President Wilson, the okeh spelling maintained some currency with other writers. As late as 1948, the St. Petersburg Times had a front-page headline reading, “Senate Okeh of Truman’s Program To Aid Backward Areas of World Forecast.”

  Many Initials

  The letters O and K have long been in the English language. So naturally from time to time they have formed someone’s initials. This coincidence has led to speculation that OK came from an exemplary product or service provided by an O.K.

  One example was a biscuit supposedly provided to Union soldiers during the Civil War. According to a 1910 issue of the Chicago Record-Herald,

  When the Civil War broke out there existed in Chicago a firm of bakers known as O. Kendall & Sons, the head of the firm being Orrin Kendall. This firm immediately began the manufacture of army biscuit, and stamped them “O.K.” to represent the firm. These biscuits, it is said, came to be preferred by the soldiers, who thought them a little better than the ordinary barmy bread. Soon “O.K.” became a cant term of approval in the army and after the war it was carried into civil life and peace occupations.

  The only problem with this theory, of course, is that OK was already flourishing more than twenty years before the Civil War. More likely, if there is truth in this story, the bakers drew on the affirmative connotation of OK rather than vice versa. For example, Pyle’s O.K. Soap was already widely advertised before the Civil War began.

  Half a century later another Chicago newspaper postulated an earlier biscuiteer as the source of OK. A letter to the Chicago Tribune published in 1957 declares:

  Sir:

  Here is the truth about O. K. In Boston about 1810 there was a baker named Otto Kimmel. He was very proud of his vanilla cookies, and the best ones he would ship down the Atlantic coast. These were stamped with his initials. Hence the term O. K. for anything that is perfect.

  FRANK BAINS

  How someone in Chicago would know about a Boston baker a century and a half earlier wasn’t explained. Nevertheless, this was enough of a possibility to prompt researcher Barry Popik to inquire at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Boston Society for an Otto Kimmel of that era, but in vain; Kimmel wasn’t even listed in the census.

  How about a telegraph operator? Supposedly there was an Oscar Kent whose transmissions were so perfect that his sign-off, OK, became synonymous for all correct.

  The website for the town of Kinderhook, New York, attributes OK to apples, again without any evidence beyond a crate at a present-day “eatery”:

  There are many stories regarding the origins of the expression “O.K.” One relates to the many apple orchards in the county. Back in the 1700s, apples from this area were packed in crates marked “Old Kinderhook.” There is even one on display in one of the eateries on the village square. Apparently people started referring to them as “O.K.” apples. Gradually the term was taken to mean a description of the apples’ “good quality” rather than their location of origin!

  One modern example using Kinderhook was proclaimed by none other than the soon-to-be-disgraced governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, in February 2008. Speaking about Martin Van Buren’s role in the building of the Erie Canal, he said:

  A little-known fact about Martin Van Buren: … He contributed a word to the English language. And that word is what we use every day and that word is OK. When Martin Van Buren was president and he wanted to get out of the White House he would put the initials OK on a memorandum and what it stood for was “Off to Kinderhook.” That is the derivation of the word OK.

  He got this from the Encyclopedia of New York State, and they ought to know. Right?

  And then a modern biographer of Van Buren, Edward Widmer, told the New York Times that OK was “briefly short for ‘oll korrect,’ a Dutch phrase for ‘all right,’ but then got shifted onto Van Buren as he ran for President.”

  Many Languages

  One reason OK has spread throughout the world, as we have noted, is that O and K are basic sounds found in most languages. Considering that languages have only a few dozen sounds (or letters) to form ten thousand or more words, it is likely that many languages will have combinations that sound like OK, either complete words such as Choctaw okeh or initials of words. It is also the case that English has borrowed many words from many other languages. It is a short jump from these facts to conclude that if a word in English sounds
like something in another language, that expression in the other language must be the source of the English word. Choctaw and Mobile were just the first of many such candidates.

  In turn, as OK has spread around the world, it is natural for speakers of other languages to assume that it developed from their own native expressions rather than being borrowed from American English.

  Early in the twentieth century it was noticed that Aux Cayes, the French name of a port in Haiti, sounds a lot like OK. It was natural, then, to speculate that Aux Cayes was the source. But why? Some said it was the rum. Supposedly, a preferable sort of rum was exported from Aux Cayes, so sailors would say happily, “It’s OK.” But no one has found any documentation of this in the nineteenth century, let alone before 1839, and anyway there is no evidence that Aux Cayes rum really was renowned. An alternative says that it was Puerto Rican rum that was labeled Aux Quais. Or that it came from aux quais, “to the wharves,” which is where French soldiers supposedly went during the American Revolution to find local women. Or that au quai, “to the dock,” was used in New Orleans prior to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 when a bale of cotton met an inspector’s approval.

  Yet another French possibility, rather far from the sound of OK but proposed in all seriousness, is that OK came from bien coquet, translated as “perfectly charming.” Or it could have been O qu-oui, a hyperenthusiastic oui meaning “yes, indeed!” found in an eighteenth-century book.

  Germanophiles have not been shy about proposing their language as the true origin of OK. One theory is that it was a misreading of the initials for alles korrekt written by a German military advisor during the Revolutionary War. Another more specifically attributes it to Baron von Steuben, the Prussian general who fought with the Americans in that war and supposedly wrote O.K. for Ober-Kommando next to his name. Or maybe it was Oberst Kommandant.

  Other German candidates include ohne Korrektur, that is, “without correction [needed],” said to have been used on documents in the late nineteenth century.

  Finnish offered oikea for “correct.” Norwegian and Danish offered the abbreviation H.G., pronounced “hah gay,” supposedly meaning “ready for action.”

  Scots English och aye, translated “oh yes,” is another serious candidate. So is Ulster English ough aye, with similar pronunciation and meaning.

  The Greek language provides olla kalla, “all good” or “all right,” as a candidate for OK. It was supposedly used by the Spartans in 600 B.C., as well as by Greek teachers on student papers in modern times. There is no doubt about the latter—but it was the result of importing OK from America, rather than exporting the earlier version. And apparently the Greek abbreviation, the letters omicron kappa (OK), means more than merely OK in English; it is said to be used for papers that are of high quality, “entirely good.”

  From Latin, omnes korrecta has been proposed.

  African languages brought by slaves to the Americas have also been noticed as potential sources of OK. It could have come from waw kay, “yes indeed” in Wolof; o ke, “that’s it” or “certainly” in Mandingo; or ki, an expression of surprise or satisfaction, in black Jamaican English, derived from Africa.

  It could indeed. But like all other candidates from other languages, there is not a shred of evidence linking it to a Boston newspaper in March 1839.

  OK / OKAY Already

  What has all this speculation wrought? An enhancement of the image of OK, on one hand, as each claimant embraces our grand expression, and on the other hand a reduction to absurdity. The latter is evident in an art exhibit in New York City in the spring of 2005 with the title “OK / OKAY.” The curator, Marc-Olivier Wahler, declares:

  The exhibition’s curatorial point of departure is the disputed etymology of the terms OK and okay. Employed universally, both signify approval and assent or, when describing a quality, acceptability. The question of their origin, however, has sparked endless debates and inspired book-length treatises.

  Maybe not endless, and maybe not book-length, but Waller does his best to widen the debate, listing eighteen different theories and democratically giving each equal weight. Among the theories not already mentioned above, there is the Civil War Theory:

  During the Civil War, when a battalion returned from the front, the first man in line carried a sign displaying the number of men killed in action: “9 Killed,” “5 Killed,” and so on. If the number was zero, the sign read OK, indicating that all had survived.

  The Anglo-Saxon Theory:

  Several centuries before okay’s first appearance, Norwegian and Danish sailors used the Anglo-Saxon term hogfor, meaning seaworthy. This was often abbreviated HG, pronounced hag-gay.

  If Anglo-Saxon is too long ago, there was Old English Theory:

  In old England, the last harvest loads brought in from the fields were called hoacky or horkey. The same term also denoted the feast following the harvest and, thus, indicated its satisfactory completion. It was soon shortened to OK.

  The Shipbuilder Theory:

  Early shipbuilders marked the timber they prepared. The first to be laid was marked OK Number 1, short for Outer Keel Number 1.

  The British Parliament Theory:

  Some bills going through the House of Lords required the approval of Lords Onslow and Kilbracken. After reading and approving these bills, they would both initial them, producing the combined signature OK.

  Another Greek Theory:

  According to the text Geoponica, dated 920 CE, the Greek letters omega and khi, when repeated twice, are effective as a magical incantation against fleas.

  And the Indian Chief Theory:

  Keokuk, Iowa, is named for an Indian chief. His admirers sometimes remarked, “Old Keokuk, he’s all right”; the initials OK came to mean the same thing.

  In any case, what’s the relevance to the exhibition? Wahler explains:

  Suggesting that issues of translation can challenge standard assumptions, the artists in OK / OKAY make artworks that stand out in a pragmatic world that tends to value clarity and brevity.

  As it turns out, there was no need to worry about clarity and brevity at the two locations of the “OK / OKAY” show. Instead, the curator explains,

  The shows explore the myriad ways in which art is no longer defined by position or place—instead gliding over the visible and exposing the limitless strata comprising its structure. Wahler proposes that this interplay triggers a slippage in interpretations as well as constant oscillations between different languages. It is in this unstable field, he suggests, that contemporary art finds its meaning: not as a cultural domain in search of aesthetic definitions, but rather a true dynamic.

  Got it? And if there was one element that those works of art by the dozen exhibitors had in common, as displayed on the exhibition website, it was that they made no reference whatever to OK.

  Which is an appropriate ending for this chapter. It has added nothing to the true explanation of OK’s origins in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. But if you have read through all of these conjectures, you deserve a license of your own. You are free to use your own creativity in imagining a properly dignified, colorful, or important origin for OK. Just be aware that it has nothing to do with what actually happened.

  7

  THE BUSINESS OF OK

  WITHIN A FEW YEARS AFTER ITS BIRTH IN 1839 AND TUMULTUOUS participation in the presidential campaign of 1840, OK developed surprisingly sober uses. Not only was it employed, in all seriousness, to approve hard copies of documents, but it also was used for their electronic versions. Indeed, it appears that OK was put to electronic use almost as soon as electronic use—the telegraph, back in those days—was born.

  The telegraph, the railroad, and OK all were in their infancy in the 1840s. By midcentury, scarcely a decade after the first instance of OK, the three were permanently intertwined in serious business. OK was no longer just a joke.

  The joke hadn’t disappeared, to be sure. Awareness of OK as a misspelled abbreviation for “all correct,” whether
in its Boston origin or in the widely retold myth of President Jackson’s notation on documents, remained strong, encouraging its use in joking contexts and inhibiting widespread use in literature. But when it came to the telegraph and railroad, the joke was ignored. OK was just too useful.

  Telegraphic OK

  The birth of OK coincided with the birth of the telegraph. Samuel F. B. Morse demonstrated his electric telegraph in 1838, a year before OK. In 1843, four years after OK was born, Congress appropriated $30,000 for an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. In 1844 the first long-distance message, “What hath God wrought,” was transmitted in Morse code, followed later that year by the first news from Baltimore, of the nomination of Henry Clay as Whig candidate for president.

  Those first messages did not include OK. But a decade later, telegraph wires had extended in many directions, and they had caught up with the railroads, which were doing likewise. The company that would be known as Western Union was formed in 1851, linking smaller telegraph companies together; in 1861 its famous transcontinental line was completed. Meanwhile, also in 1851, railroads began dispatching trains by telegraph. For mutual benefit, telegraph lines usually ran next to the rails.

  And it was there that OK became SOP. Evidence as to exactly when that happened is elusive, but in an 1861 book published in Columbus, Ohio, Reminiscences in the Life of a Locomotive Engineer, it was already referred to as an established practice. Looking back at the early days of railroading and the dangers railroad men routinely faced, the anonymous engineer recalls:

  If one of his intimate companions gets killed, he can only bestow a passing thought upon it, for he has not been unexpectant of it, and he knows full well that the same accident may at the same place make it his turn next, as he passes over the same road every day, running the same chances, as did his friend just gone.