「OK」の正体は、1839年ボストンの新聞の“わざと間違えたつづり”ジョークだった

We say "OK" every day, but where did it come from? In 1839, newspapers in Boston liked funny short forms. Writers spelled words wrong on purpose. "All correct" became "oll korrect," and then "O.K."

The next year, President Martin Van Buren ran for election again. His nickname was "Old Kinderhook," so his fans used "O.K." too. Soon people all over America knew the word.

In the late 1830s, Boston newspapers were full of joke abbreviations. Writers first misspelled a phrase and then shortened it, so "no go" became "know go" and then "K.G."

On March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post printed "o.k." and explained it as "all correct." The joke came from the silly spelling "oll korrect." Most of these jokes soon died, but "O.K." got lucky.

In the 1840 election, supporters of President Martin Van Buren, who was known as "Old Kinderhook," formed an O.K. Club. He lost the election, yet the word spread across the country. Other stories say it came from a Choctaw word or from President Andrew Jackson's poor spelling. Experts no longer accept them.

For more than a century, nobody could say for sure where "OK" came from. Popular explanations pointed to a Choctaw word, the Scottish "och aye," the French "aux quais," or President Andrew Jackson's supposedly weak spelling.

In 1963 and 1964, the Columbia University scholar Allen Walker Read published a series of articles in the journal American Speech that convinced most dictionary makers. He found "o.k." in the Boston Morning Post of March 23, 1839, followed by the gloss "all correct."

Boston papers at the time were in the middle of a craze for abbreviations, and some writers went further by abbreviating deliberate misspellings, such as "O.W." for "oll wright." "O.K." stood for "oll korrect." The word might have faded like the others.

Instead, in 1840, supporters of Martin Van Buren, nicknamed "Old Kinderhook" after his hometown, made it a campaign slogan, and telegraph operators later adopted it. So the Van Buren story is half true. It explains how the word spread, but the word already existed. Read's work accounts for its birth, though not fully for why this one joke outlived all the rest.