O.K.

While Zenas was stabling my pacer at a big livery stable called the O.K. Corral, I set about getting my kit off our pack mule.

Telegraph Days Larry Mcmurtry 2006

O.K., that is overstating the case considerably, but after endless digs at the quality of the N. F.L.'s West divisions, the representatives of those divisions won their games this weekend as home underdogs.

The Fifth Down 2009

O.K., that is overstating the case considerably, but after endless digs at the quality of the N. F.L.'s West divisions, the representatives of those divisions won their games this weekend as home underdogs.

The Fifth Down 2009

O.K., that is overstating the case considerably, but after endless digs at the quality of the N. F.L.'s West divisions, the representatives of those divisions won their games this weekend as home underdogs.

The Fifth Down 2009

The Frenchman, reporting from a French ship named Le great Eastern—it had been The Great Eastern before it was purchased and relaunched—was so pleased with his American O.K. that he used it twice in the same communication.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

And O.K. then arose for “oll korrect,” the deliberately incorrect spelling of “all correct.”

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

By now, O.K. looks and sounds oll korrect pretty much anywhere on language-using Earth.xvi iAs delightful as a Latin-speaking ATM may be, it would probably still eat your card after the third presentation of “Hic PIN invalidus est.”

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Perhaps.xv In the American spirit of inclusiveness, lots of alternative ancestors for okay have been proposed since Mencken offered eleven potential etymologies for O.K. in 1919.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Some discovered OK through direct contact with the United States, as when a seaman laying a transatlantic cable in 1869 reported from his ship, “Tout est O.K. à bord” or “All is O.K. on board,” the first attested use of O.K. in French.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

The prewar observer of words H. L. Mencken said of O.K. that it was one of the “American masterpieces”—words formed of a few humble letters, like COD or PDQxiv Mencken noted the surprising endurance of ok, and its phenomenal popularity in foreign languages across the world, as far away as continental Europe and Asia.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010