Origin of 'Okay' that you Prefer

[Kire]

Poll question: Origin of 'Okay' that you Prefer

Meaning

Satisfactory - all correct.

Origin

Possibly the most researched phrase of them all, but with no clear evidence as to the origin. The contenders are:

[cestpaspossible]

1. The various explanations are Oll Korrect afaik

[Igel]

2. Well, if it was used in Boston in 1838, we can pretty much

rule out later explanations, except as folk etymologies.

I'll go with Dave Chathman's impromptu post to the Linguist List summarizing Read. I haven't heard of an earlier attestation.

"The excerpt from the Funk book posted by Vicki Fromkin only gives part of the story, as does the posting which gave citations for three 1964 American Speech articles by Allen Walker Read. In addition to the articles by Read cited by , Read published three articles the previous year (1963) in American Speech as well, entitled "The First Stage in the History of "O.K."", "The Second Stage in the History of "O.K."", and "Could Andrew Jackson Spell?" (this last a refutation of the widespread but demonstrably erroneous belief that O.K. originated from Jackson's misspelling "oll korrect"). In these articles Read reports on further research undertaken after the 1941 article cited by the Funks (and then posted by Fromkin), showing that though the term first gained wide acceptance in the 1840 presidential election when it was taken over as an abbreviation for "Old Kinderhook", it actually originated in Boston as part of a craze
for comical abbreviations in 1838-39. This craze started in the summer of 1838, and Read documents it with dozens upon dozens of citations from the Boston press. The craze started with acronyms such as "O.F.M" for "Our First Men" (a very popular phrase at the time), "N.G." for "No Go", "S.P." for "Small Potatoes", "G.T." for "Gone to Texas", and many more. The first printed use of "o.k." found by Read is in the Boston Morning Post of March 23, 1839, in which it is used in a humorous context and explicitly glossed as
"all correct". This was part of a turn the acronym craze had taken toward using comical misspellings as the basis for the initials, including "K.G." for "no go" ("Know Go") and "K.Y." for "no use" ("Know Yuse"). This was undoubtedly done to increase the "in-group" status of the acronyms as they gained wider use, somewhat similar to the Cockney rhyming slang of today.
In any case, as Read documents, "O.K." had spread to New York by the summer of 1839 and the New Orleans by the fall, in both cases prompting newspaper articles (quoted extensively by Read) remarking on and explaining the acronym craze, sometimes glossing "O.K." as "all correct", sometimes leaving it unglossed. By the election year of 1840, the term was well established in the speech (or at least the writing) of the literati of the day, and was taken over as an abbreviation for "Old Kinderhook", the nickname given to Martin van Buren, the Democratic candidate for President. This use in
connection with a Presidential campaign gave "O.K." much wider currency than it had before, but Read provides evidence that its acronymic origin the previous year was still well known and in fact used for political purposes by newspaper editors during the campaign. The story about Andrew Jackson originating the term, in fact, originated during this campaign, but Read argues (convincingly, I think) that this was mudslinging pure and simple, and that Jackson had nothing to do with it. In the 1964 article "The Folklore of "O.K."", Read traces the development of the dozens of folk
etymologies of O.K. that began to spring up in the 1800's (and continue to spring up today), and concludes that they are all wishful thinking without any evidence to support them."