Okey Dokey

Today’s post is from my “Forgotten English” calendar*. Each page contains a word with a definition and then also includes a lifestyle snippet. Today’s word is "square dinkham," which according to the Soldier and Sailor Glossary, 1925, means true, straightforward, and correct. However, that’s not why I’m posting.

The snippet for today, Thursday, March 23, 2006 is titled “Okey Dokey” and I now share it with you my dear readers:

Okey Dokey

On this date in 1839, the coinage O.K. made what may have been its first appearance in print. The Boston Morning Post used it—facetiously to mean “all correct”—in a report on the locally based Anti-Bell-Ringing Society, whose mission was to halt the clanging of dinner bells. That year, waggish newspapermen began using it and other slightly off-kilter initial-formed terms, such as K.Y. for “no use” and, later, K.O. for “commanding officer”. In 1840 O.K. became a catchword during President Martin Van Buren’s unsuccessful reelection campaign. Van Buren was popularly known as “Old Kinderhook,” after his hometown in New York’s Hudson River Valley, and a group of his advocates created the O.K. Club. But another U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson, was apparently so sure that O.K. stemmed from the Choctaw word okeh (meaning “it is so”) that he would write it as such. O.K. became the best known of all Americanisms, formally adopted as both a noun and a verb, and became part of many languages worldwide.

Fascinating stuff. First, I’ve been spelling okey dokey wrong (okie dokie). Second, I had no idea of the origin of O.K. I have learned something new today.

*You have no idea how many hits I have received from people doing searches for this word.