A Boston in-joke that became America’s catchword In the 1830s, a Boston fad for playful misspellings birthed OK (“oll korrect”), alongside KC (“knuff ced”), KY (“know yuse”), and OW (“oll wright”). Published on March 23, 1839 in the Boston Morning Post, OK leapt from insider joke to nationwide slang as other papers echoed it. In 1840, “Old Kinderhook” Martin Van Buren’s campaign built OK Clubs while opponents flipped it to “Orful Konspiracy” and “Orful Katastrophe”; the presidency failed, the word endured. That bruising election cemented OK in American vernacular.
Telegraph speed and K’s visual punch cement OK as the neutral affirmative The telegraph’s 1844 debut made OK ideal: two crisp taps, rarely confused, quickly adopted by railroad operators as the standard receipt, and by 1865 no message was regarded sent without it. K’s rarity in English drove a “Kraze for K” that kept the letters visually sticky—hard Cs became Ks to Katch attention, from Klearflax Linen Rugs and the Kook-Rite Stove to Krispy-Kreme and Kool-Aid. By the 1890s, origins blurred and myths like a Choctaw “okeh” source spread, but the word was already embedded in everyday language. Today OK works as the ultimate neutral affirmative that “affirms without evaluating”: it simply accepts information, marks safe arrival, rates food as acceptable, confirms plan changes, and was arguably the first word spoken when humans landed on the moon.