what does "ok" stand for?

Answer 1

okay

Answer 2

.During the Creek War the Choctaws, principally under the leadership of Pushmataha, not only sided with the Americans but contributed 500 men to Andrew Jackson's army....

- Although the Creek war was over, the Choctaw contingent would help the Americans in one last battle. In January, 1815, tradition has it that Pushmataha and his warriors, while serving under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, gave a lasting contribution to the English Language. During the battle, Jackson is said to have asked Pushmataha if the fight against the British was going well for the Choctaw detachment. Pushmataha supposedly answered with a Choctaw word which meant that things were all right. Jackson liked the word and began using it himself. The word was OK. According to the Dictionary of Word Origins, the favored source for the symbol OK ". . seems to be the Choctaw word OKEH, it is so" ...The use is also attributed to President Andrew Jackson among others... It also intimates it may have actually been Pushmataha's nephew who had this reported exchange with Jackson. Also, it may have been Jackson's adjutant who made the inquiry.]

Answer 3

There are lots of theories, but nobody really knows. Not really. It appeared and spread so rapidly that it could have come from almost anywhere. And even those people who first used it could have been inspired by other sources.

It's fun to look at many different theories, but just keep in mind that is all they are. Nobody can really be certain about this one.

Answer 4

ok is a lazy spelling of Okay. It does not "stand" for anything

Answer 5

OK stands for okay, its just like aim lingo like cu l8r

Answer 6

Allen Walker Read conclusively documented the early history of the abbreviation "O.K.", now also spelled "okay", in a series of six articles in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964. He tracked the spread and evolution of the word in American newspapers and other written documents, and later its spread to the rest of the world. He also documented controversy surrounding "O.K." and the history of its folk etymologies, both of which are intertwined with the history of the word itself.

The form "O.K." first became popular in Boston newspapers in 1839 as part of a broader fad of forming and employing acronyms, many of them barbarous. Other examples at the time included "G.T.T." for "gone to Texas" and "K.Y." for "know yuse". The general fad may have existed in spoken or informal written American English for a decade or more before its appearance in newspapers. "O.K." was intended as a misspelling of "all correct"; in the first few years it was often published with this gloss. (Note that gloss indicates the spread of a new word.) The gloss was sometimes varied with degraded spelling such as "Oll Korrect" or even "Ole Kurreck". Deliberate word play was associated with the acronym fad and was a yet broader contemporary American fad. In this first phase, "O.K." was spread with the acronym fad from Boston to other American cities.

The first recorded appearance in the first phase was in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, in the following passage (mostly probably written by editor Charles Gordon Greene):

The above is from the Providence Journal, the editor of which is a little too quick on the trigger, on this occasion. We said not a word about our deputation passing "through the city" of Providence.—We said our brethren were going to New York in the Richmond, and they did go, as per Post of Thursday. The "Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells", is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have his "contribution box," et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.
In a second phase, "O.K." was selected and boosted by the 1840 presidential election. Democratic supporters of candidate Martin Van Buren equated "Oll Korrect" with "Old Kinderhook", which was a nickname for van Buren. In response, Whig opponents attributed "O.K.", in the sense of "Oll Korrect", to Andrew Jackson's bad spelling. Thus, the election popularized both "O.K." and a folk etymology that the acronym came from Andrew Jackson.

"O.K." spread across the United States over the next two decades, and probably as far as Jamaica by 1848. The Civil War cemented its use, as much by confirming to American speakers that it was widely understood as by spreading it yet further. In the second half of the 19th century it spread to England and many other countries. In England it was first viewed as an improper Americanism, but it became widely accepted between the first and second World Wars.


Folk etymologies
The wordplay origin of "O.K." invited folk etymology and joke etymology from the beginning. Eventually there appeared folk etymologies that were not connected with either word play or the 1840 Presidential election. In particular, in 1859, a Tennessee historian named Albigence Waldo Putnam misread an appearance of "O.R." in a 1790 missive by Andrew Jackson as "O.K.". This made Andrew Jackson the dominant theory of the origin of "O.K." until it was disproven by Woodford Heflin in 1941 using photographic analysis.

President Woodrow Wilson attributed "OK" to the Choctaw word "okeh", which means "it is so". (This may be slightly different from the main sense of "O.K." as "acceptable", or "I agree".) Wilson accepted the Jackson etymology and supposed that Jackson took the word from Choctaw. But this etymology, like all etymologies other than the one found by Read, lacks a clear historical record.

It has been suggested that in World War II the term "zero killed" was used when a unit suffered no casualties in combat, and that this was then shortened to "0K". This proposed etymology is grossly anachronistic, since by this time the term had been widely used for a full century. The same theory has also been applied to the Civil War, but this is also anachronistic.

There are also many proposed international etymologies of "O.K.", but they lack supporting written evidence just as the American folk etymologies do.

Answer 7

It's one of America's most popular exports, used just about everywhere, from Paris to Beijing, from Johannesburg to Calcutta. But how did OK come to be? Linguists have pondered the question for years, arriving at many colorful -- but incorrect -- answers.

Some believe it came from the abbreviation of Orrin Kendall biscuits, which soldiers ate during the civil war. Others say OK is short for Aux Cayes, a Haitian port that American sailors praised for its rum. Another legend suggests the word comes from Old Keokuk, a Native American tribal chief who was said to have signed treaties with his initials.

But none of those versions have been proven correct, as NPR's Neva Grant reports for Morning Edition's Present at the Creation series.

What is known is that one of the first instances of OK appearing in print was in the spring of 1839 by the Boston Morning Post:

It is hardly necessary to say to those who know Mr. Hughes, that his establishment will be found to be 'A. No. One' -- that is, O.K. -- all correct.

So if OK stands for "all correct," wouldn't it be "AC"? Not exactly, says linguist Erin McKean, who points out that the word was intentionally misspelled. Much like the way people on the Internet shorten or abbreviate words when typing, OK was misspelled on purpose.

"For instance, a lot of kids online spell "cool," "k-e-w-l," says McKean, senior editor for U.S. dictionaries at Oxford Press. "They know how to spell cool, but it just looks cooler to spell it "k-e-w-l."

It was cool in certain East Coast cities in the mid-19th century to substitute OK for "all correct." McKean says it was common for people of that day to use inside lingo -- shorthand full of puns, purposeful misspellings and abbreviations. For example, they'd use "SP" for "small potatoes," or "TBFTB" for "too big for their britches."

Other abbreviations faded into obscurity, but the word OK stuck around. One of the reasons it weathered time is because it got a boost from then-president Martin Van Buren.

Van Buren, a native of Kinderhook, N.Y., was popularly referred to as "Old Kinderhook" -- OK for short. Van Buren's 1840 reelection campaign became so heated that the word OK was widely used and abused by both sides.

In fact, to hurt the Democratic Party, an opponent started a rumor that it was former president Andrew Jackson who created OK, as an abbreviation of "all correct." The rumor implied that the rustic Jackson was a poor speller. That explanation for OK wasn't true, either, but it did have staying power. And it helped propel the use of OK even further.

So much, in fact, that it's used all around the world today.

"To talk about the larger phenomenon as OK spread across the America and given to the world -- that implies that it has multiple origins; that people accept it for a variety of reasons," says Michael Adams, a linguist and an Albright College professor.

Adams says there are words like OK in many other languages. In the West African language of Wolof, "waw kay" means "yes." In Choctaw, "okeh" means "indeed."

While there isn't any proof that any of the words gave birth to the American OK, Adams says it's possible that the many non-English phrases helped the English one stick.

"The influence of Choctaw, African American speech, political speech -- all of that came together in a kind of melting pot," Adams says. "There is a sense that the newspaper started it, but all those other influences came together to make OK probably the most popular American English word."

McKean says because OK has that sense of "jauntiness and belonging," people from all over the globe want a part of it.

Famed journalist H.L. Mencken wrote about it. American soldiers took it to the places they were stationed. It was even taken into space, by astronauts like John Glenn, who excitedly exclaimed as the Friendship 7 launched, that "We're all OK!"

"I'm trying to think what people would have said before OK," McKean questions. "If you had to go through a day without it, could you do it? Are you going to say, "right you are," or "very well?"

Answer 8

Etymology: abbreviation of oll korrect, facetious alteration of all correct

Answer 9

Short for okay

Answer 10

I always heard the "Old Kinderhook" one.

Answer 11

yes