OK, here’s a story the linguists will love. “What’s the real origin of OK,” from Mental Floss. Although the article’s over six years old now, some stories are just timeless. This is one of them. You won’t find a term more ubiquitous in English than “OK.” And you’ll have to search far and wide for a linguistic derivation more tortuous. Quoting Mental Floss:
There may be more stories about the origin of “OK” than there are uses for it. It comes from the Haitian port “Aux Cayes.” Or from Louisiana French au quai. Maybe from a Puerto Rican rum labeled “Aux Quais?” Or the German alles korrekt or Ober-Kommando? How about from Chocktaw okeh? Or the Scots och aye? From Wolof waw kay? Or the Greek olla kalla? From Latin omnes korrecta?
Other stories attribute it to bakers stamping their initials on biscuits. Or shipbuilders marking wood for “outer keel.” Or Civil War soldiers carrying signs for “zero killed.” But the real truth about OK, as Allan Metcalf, the author of OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, puts it, is that it was “born as a lame joke perpetrated by a newspaper editor in 1839.”
So, what was the joke? For that, you gotta click the link and read the article. But I won’t be giving anything away to tell you that it involves more than a jokey newspaper editor. It also involves POTUS #8, good old mutton-chop Martin Van Buren. “WHAT???” I hear you exclaim? “Yep,” I reply. “Go ahead. Read the article. I dare ya.”
Got it, Mutton-chop?
Oooo-kay then.