ok
/ˌoʊˈkeɪ/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.14 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
2
Letters
2
Syllables
2
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
adj
adj
Satisfactory, reasonably good; not exceptional.
adj
Satisfied (with); willing to accept a state of affairs.
adj
In good health or a good emotional state.
adv
Example Sentences
- "We can start as soon as we get the OK."
- "I don't want to OK this amount of money."
- "I'll need to OK that with my boss."
- "In the data case, Judge John Bates has OK’d four depositions, while green-lighting other discovery requests from the challengers."
- "Type a suitable name for your Marker and OK the dialogue box."
- "When you OK the crop, the image size will be adjusted to match the front image resolution."
Etymology
Origin disputed. Wikipedia lists many possible etymologies, of which the most widely accepted is that it is an abbreviation of oll/orl korrect, a comical spelling of all correct, which first appeared in print in The Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, as part of a fad for similar fanciful abbreviations in the United States during the late 1830s. The expression became popular through its use in the presidential campaign of Martin Van Buren in 1840, who was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and then slowly acquired other meanings. The Choctaw word oke, okeh (“it is so”), common in Choctaw translations of the Bible, could also explain OK's variety of affirmative definitions. Additionally, okeh was the most common etymology of okay in dictionaries until the 1960s, and linguistically predates Boston's O.K.. However, this theory suffers from the fact that the Choctaw language was relatively obscure and generally spoken (sometimes in a pidgin form) mainly with African-American slaves.
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₂el- (other)
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌoʊˈkeɪ/
- British English: /ˌəʊˈkeɪ/