Did OK Really Start as a Spelling Mistake?

We use the word OK all the time! But where did it come from? A joke in an 1830s newspaper? Or Andrew Jackson's spelling mistake? And what does it have to do with Martin Van Buren's campaign? Learn the surprising history behind this super useful word!

Sources

Transcript

Tzeela: Hi I'm Tzeela and I'm 17

Rina: Hi I'm Rina and I'm 15

Dalia: Hey, I'm Dalia and I'm 11

All: And this is Things You Thought You Knew About History!


Rina: (dramatic) Okay, fine.

Tzeela: OK is a word we use a lot and it has a crazy history.

Dalia: In the late 1830s, some newspapers, especially the Boston Morning Post, included many abbreviations in their articles, such as SP for small potato or OW for all right. These abbreviations were supposed to be funny. Most of these abbreviations didn’t really become popular and aren’t used anymore.

Tzeela: OK was started as one of these abbreviations, it stood for a misspelled version of all correct. After first appearing in the Boston Morning Post, in an article likely written by the editor Charles Gordon Greene. OK appeared here and there in other newspaper articles.

Dalia: So why was OK the only abbreviation to stick?

Rina: In 1840, OK became more popular through the presidential reelection campaign of Martin Van Buren. Van Buren's opponent William Herny Harison had many slogans such as “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” and “Log Cabin and Hard Cider.”

Tzeela: To try to come up with a slogan for Van Buren, someone who worked for a political organization in NYC decided to start calling Van Buren, OK. This stood for Old Kinderhook because he was no longer young and was from Kinderhook, NY.

Dalia: people also started using OK to stand for other phrases about Van Buren such as “always candid” or “orful catastrophe”

Rina: Even though Van Buren lost reelection, his campaign did help the phrase OK become more popular. The phrase OK became a joke and was used to stand for all sorts of things. But because OK was used in so many different contexts, it was at risk of losing its meaning and fading out of use.

Tzeela: A myth about Andrew Jackson that became popular helped make sure OK would mean all correct.

Rina: Andrew Jackson came from a poor upbringing and his education was viewed by some as lesser. Because of this opponents claimed that he was horrible at spelling.

Tzeela: James Gordan Benet, the editor of the New York Herald and a Van Buren opponent, wrote that Jackson used OK to stand for all correct when he would label his documents. He wrote this during the re-election campaign of Van Buren as a way to attack him because Van Buren was often considered Andrew Jackson’s successor.

Dalia: This article was accepted as a reasonable explanation for how the word OK came to be and the story continued to spread.

Rina: But that’s not really what happened. The first time we have evidence of OK appearing in the documents is as an abbreviation in newspapers in 1839, over ten years after Andrew Jackson.

Tzeela: Until the 1960s when Allen Walker Read, a Columbia University professor, and linguist, discovered where OK really started, people also had many other theories.

Rina: Present Woodrow Wilson even spread the myth that okay came from a Choctaw word spelled o-k-e-h.

Tzeela: Another theory was that OK came from army biscuits during the Civil War that were stamped with OK for their manufacturer, O. Kendall & Sons. People liked the biscuits so started saying OK about things they liked. But this theory also would be the wrong time frame, because the civil war was after the word already OK started being used.

Dalia: I didn’t realize OK had such a cool backstory!!

Tzeela: Me neither! Now time for some trivia time!!!!

Dalia: What is the study of the origins of words called?

10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1

Etymology

What is the name of the first Newspaper printed in the US?

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The Boston Newsletter

What is the oldest newspaper in the US that has been in continuous publication?

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The Hartford Courant

What are the 3 most circulated newspapers in the US (2021)?

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Wall Street Journal, NYTs and USA Today