Everyone says OK, but where did it come from?

In the late 1830s, newspapers in Boston and New York enjoyed a fad of misspelling phrases on purpose and using only their initials. "No go," for example, became "know go" and was written K.G.

The "o.k." printed in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, was one of these. The writer glossed it as "all correct," but the two letters really stood for the mangled spelling "oll korrect." Readers found the humor in that wrong spelling.

Most of these fads were quickly forgotten, but OK survived thanks to the 1840 presidential election. Martin Van Buren, running for a second term, was nicknamed "Old Kinderhook" after his hometown, and his supporters formed "O.K. Clubs" and used the two letters like a slogan.

Van Buren lost the election, but OK stuck in people's mouths and settled in as a way to say "good" or "no problem."

Many stories have circulated about where OK came from, including claims that it came from the Choctaw word "okeh," from Wolof in West Africa, or from Scots.

Then in 1963, linguist Allen Walker Read combed through old newspapers one by one and found the 1839 article. Since then, the newspaper-joke explanation has been the most widely accepted, and most major English dictionaries follow it.

Saying OK works almost everywhere, but it is wise to be careful with the hand sign made by forming a circle with your thumb and index finger. In Korea and Japan it can mean money, and in parts of France it reads as "worthless." In some places, such as Brazil, it is taken as a rude gesture.

When you want to say "good" while traveling, it is safer to say OK out loud or simply nod than to rely on the hand sign.