perhaps abbr of oll korrect, humorous alteration of all correct. It is almost certain that OK arose as part of a vogue for facetious abbreviations in newspapers in Boston and New York in the late 1830s. OK stood for ‘oll korrect’, just as OW stood for ‘oll wright’ or ‘all right’ and KG for ‘know go’ or ‘no go’. It was taken up and used as a slogan during the presidential campaign of 1840 by supporters of the Democratic candidate Martin Van Buren, whose nickname ‘Old Kinderhook’ (from his birthplace, Kinderhook) coincidentally had the initials of OK. By the end of 1840 the term was widely popularized in the USA, although it was not common in Britain before the 20th cent. Other origins have been proposed: Choctaw oke ‘it is’, Scottish och aye, the Haitian port Aux Cayes, a railway freight agent named Obadiah Kelly, and so on. None of these has any basis in fact