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I've been watching a lot of foreign films lately, and it struck me the other day how many different non-English speaking cultures have adopted the use of this word. It's not my imagination, is it?

Anybody know the derivation? (I know, I could probably google it, but what's the fun in that? I assume it's of English derivation? I'm sure there are some word nerds out there.

) How many countries have you heard it used in? Are there other words like it that seem to have been adopted so universally?

Am I making this up?

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KateL57

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One theory is that it came from a misspelling of "oll korrect"...associated with some US president? I bet different sources will claim different origins, but I don't know how they really know.

I have also heard it in a lot of countries, but since I'm only a semi-word nerd, I don't know how many

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Haci Richard

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For whatever it's worth Wikipedia has quite a bit to say on the subject.

As far as it's use in other languages goes, I've noticed practically everywhere I've bee. The only two langauges I've learnt to any degree of competency, Turkish and Japanese, both use it a lot. The Turks tend to spell it okey, while the Japanese use OK -- they don't even use any of their own writing systems. They just incorporate into sentences, like in "OK です"-- it's okay.

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skobb

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Here is the presidential part of the lore:

quote:
The oldest written references to 'OK' result from its adoption as a slogan by the Democratic party during the American Presidential election of 1840. Their candidate, President Martin Van Buren, was nicknamed 'Old Kinderhook' (after his birthplace in New York State), and his supporters formed the 'OK Club'.

This undoubtedly helped to popularize the term (though it did not get President Van Buren re-elected!). During the late 1830s there had been a brief but widespread craze in the US for humorous misspellings, and the form orl korrekt which was among them could explain the initials 'OK'. Such a theory has been supported by more than one distinguished American scholar, and is given in many dictionaries, including Oxford dictionaries.

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Calescence

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According to a linguistics blog, it could be one of the most recognized words on the planet:
http://www.languagemonitor.com/OK.html

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moniak

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OK is pretty much understood everywhere, no matter what country.
My uderstanding is, like KateL57 said, that it's derived from wrong spelling "oll korrekt". Many of the immigrants to the US were either illiterate, or they didn't mater the English language.

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moniak

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I meant to say