Word Stories: okay

Steve Taylore-Knowles looks at the stories behind the English language.

While planning a new product in 1994, the Coca-Cola company found that Coca-Cola was the second most recognisable term across all languages. The first was okay. (Unfortunately, the new product, OK Soda, wasn’t okay and flopped.) History does not record what the third and fourth were, but my guess would be Manchester and United.

Quite nice, I suppose, that number one on the list should be a positive four-letter word and not an unprintable one – although I suspect that one or two of those might make the top ten. Naturally, various groups are keen to claim the origins of okay for themselves, so let me just run through a few of the claims I (and, it has to be said, the majority of scholars) find more or less unconvincing.

It comes from waw-kay (an emphatic form of ‘yes’) in the African language, Wolof, used by some black slaves. It comes from hoke (it is so) in the Native America language, Choctaw. It comes from the French au quai, written on crates of cotton ready to be loaded onto ships. It comes from the Greek όλα καλά. It comes from O. Kendall, a supplier of biscuits who stamped his initials on his products. It comes from the initials of Obediah Kelly, a railroad freight agent. It comes from the name of a port in Haiti: Aux Cayes. It comes from a German general who fought on the American side in the Revolutionary War and who used to sign his documents ‘Ober Kommando’.

The most convincing derivation was put forward by Allen Walker Read in 1963. The word had its origins in a late 1830s newspaper fad for coining initials to jokingly stand for certain phrases, especially as pronounced or spelled by those less educated than journalists and readers. Examples include OFM (‘our first men’ = local dignitaries), NG (‘no go’), OW (‘oll wright’ = ’all right’) and OK (‘oll korrect’ = ’all correct’). This was taken up in the 1840 general election when the candidate Martin Van Buren was known as Old Kinderhook, after his home town, and his followers used the word ‘OK’ in various slogans. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that the spelling ‘okay’ appeared. Okay?

If there are any aspects of English words you've always wondered about, drop me a line at [email protected] and I'll see if I can come up with an answer.