In a Nutshell:
The Etymology of "OK"Consider the expression "O.K" as it was used in the early to mid 1960's. Peter, Paul and Mary were singing, in the song "All Mixed Up"
You know this language that we speak,The song was written by Pete Seeger, who was at the center of the folk music scene as the composer of such songs as "This Land Is Your Land." Seeger said he based his statement about "okay" on Choctaw traditions such as the one that Andrew Jackson heard the expression from the Choctaw during the Indian Wars before he passed it on to the rest of the world. One apocryphal story has a Choctaw warrior under his command using the expression to Andrew Jackson to express victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. In 1840 a “Jackson Breast Pin” was advertised celebrating "the hero of New Orleans and having upon it…the very frightful letters O.K."
is part German, Latin and part Greek
Celtic and Arabic all in a heap,
well amended by the people in the street.
Choctaw gave us the word "okay"…Also at the center of this folk music scene was the Okeh record label, "okeh" being recognized as the older spelling for "an Indian word." The first Okeh records had a Native American silhouette logo on the label. The Arrow shirt company marketed an Okeh collar for a while with the slogan "all that its name implies." The advertisers felt no need to explain to the public what it was the name implied. (The author is indebted to Elina Smith of Cluett, Peabody & Co., Inc., New York, who included photocopies of three "Okeh" shirt collar ads in an April 29, 2002 letter.)
The expression was still occasionally spelled "okeh" in popular usage at that time in America, and that was a preferred spelling in other parts of the world such as Germany and Russia. It is still a preferred spelling in those parts of the world.
Dictionary entries of the day routinely cited a Choctaw etymology based on resources going back to 1825, especially an 1870 Grammar of the Choctaw Language which treated the expression in some detail, saying the expression meant "it is so and in no other way" and was often used as an interjection to get the attention of the user. The Choctaw etymology for okay was printed for decades on bottles of an English condiment, "O.K. Sauce."
The US Postal Service was introducing new changes including two-letter abbreviations for the states. Oklahoma was given the abbreviation 'OK,' which fit in very well with the myriad of Choctaw and other Muskogeon place names. For example, the Choctaw village that had been "North Muskogee" until that name was changed to "Okay" in 1919 became officially designated as "Okay, OK."
Of course, in the early 1960's, just as today, the expression was considered unacceptable and inappropriate for standard English, as any student who used it in an essay or paper was bound to find out. The early Grammar of the Choctaw Language mentioned earlier pointed out that Choctaw culture was one of "drunkenness, ignorance, and immorality" and the English speaking culture one of "sobriety, godliness, and civilization." The inference was obvious, that the use of the Choctaw language was to court "spiritual and physical degradation." Very early uses of the expression called it "frightful" or "hideous." One newspaper editor apologized for the use of the expression in his paper the day before and assured his readers that it was inappropriate for use in the paper and would never happen again. Another news story referred to the "mysterious letters, the power of which, when exerted, is so fatal to the peace and harmony of the city…"
Although the Choctaw etymology was widely accepted during the early 1960's, the expression other events were also happening at that time in the etymology of "OK." Columbia professor and editor of the scholarly American Speech, Allen Walker Read, had been promoting for 20 years the importance his discovery of a couple of early uses of "OK" dealing with Martin Van Buren. He argued that the popular usage of "OK" was derived from an acronym for "old Kinderhook," which referred to Van Buren's birthplace.
There were literally dozens of instances of "OK" in the published record before the instances discovered by Read. The 1830’s and 40’s was the time of an extremely popular fad in which normal expressions were given facetious or “sportive” spellings and acronyms such as “N.C.” for “’nuff ced” or “K.Y.” for “know yuse.” “OK” was the basis for an endless array of these facetious acronyms, and no linguist before Read saw no reason why "old Kinderhook" was any more important in the life of the expression than any of those other uses such as "Orful Katastrophe," "Out of Kash" or — by far and away the most popular — “Oll Korrect," which was often associated with Jackson.
In a series of papers for American Speech Read acknowledges these things and mentions several sources of scholarly evidence associating the English expression with the Choctaw one. He offers explicit statements to that affect from, among others, 1) a professor of English and "excellent scholar" well versed in Choctaw, 2) a student of Choctaw history, president of the Constitutional Convention instrumental in creating the state of Oklahoma and subsequently the first governor of that state, 3) "a reputable etymologist" and "prominent member of the American Philological Association" 4) a President of the United States and author of a 5-volume A History of the American People.
Read offers no refutation of this evidence of any kind. He maintains that the songs, stories, traditions, geographical names, record labels, sauce bottle labels, and shirt labels — as well as scholarly statements and dictionary entries — were folklore promoted by Indian lovers and therefore irrelevant to serious discussion of the term.
Read does not offer any explicit or scholarly evidence to support his “old Kinderhook” etymology.
The only evidence he offers is two examples the use of "O.K." as part of the fad to find or manufacture acronyms. Both instances were in a political propaganda sheet that was only published for about four years. One use of "O.K." for "Old Kinderhook" was a facetious gag not meant to be taken seriously; indeed, to take the acronym seriously is to miss the whole point. The other was the ad for the lapel pin noted earlier celebrating the victory of Andrew Jackson and the Choctaws at the Battle of New Orleans. In neither case did the user of the acronym suggest in any way that “old Kinderhook” figured any more prominently in the origin of the expression than any of the dozens or hundreds of similar “sportive” uses. Nevertheless, Read argues that this obscure New York City based usage "looms overwhelmingly important" in the etymology of the expression and established "the trajectory of O.K. as it rocketed across the American linguistic sky."
Central to Read’s argument were the O.K. Boys, "bravos" who chose “O.K” as their name and war cry and who were standard bearers for the New York City Tammanies in the 1830's. Read was unable to discuss the O.K. Boys without mentioning bravos, drum beats, powwows and war cries, but he did not mention that “bravos” is the short form for “Indios bravos” or “wild Indians.” Nor did he mention that the Tammanies were a group named after and celebrating a Delaware Indian chief, and that their overriding characteristic was their preoccupation with Native American dress, language, customs and rituals. Tammany Hall was often referred to as the Great Wigwam. The history of the various tribes of Tammanies is very well documented and argues very persuasively that if a group of Tammanies chose "O.K." as their name and war cry it was because they perceived it as an Indian expression and intended to use it as such.
And finally, it should be noted that the syntax of use of "OK" in English is very atypical of English but very characteristic of Choctaw. English tends to use modifiers to modify other nouns, verbs or other modifiers. Choctaw makes great use of particles that do not modify any noun, verb or modifier but merely emphasize the point being made. Take, for example, that quintessential use of “OK” in the sentence, “We arrived OK.” Perhaps that “OK” may not modify either “we” or “arrived.” This is especially the case in some situation in which our arrival is called into question. And so, for example, the comment "Someone said you never arrived" might well be met with "Oh, we arrived OK." Indeed, we would probably see no contradiction at all in the declaration “Oh, we arrived OK, but we were too late” or “Oh, we arrived OK, but we were all sunburned, and Jack had a sprained ankle.” In other words, "OK" does not necessarily reflect on either the condition we were in when we arrived or how satisfactory our arriving was, but merely emphasizes the point that we arrived. It is a perfect example of how the expression is used in Choctaw: "We arrived, it is so and not otherwise."
The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang lists "okeh" as the obsolete equivalent of "okay" four times but says that "[w]ithout concrete evidence of a prior and established English borrowing from Choctaw-Chickasaw" the claim that this "okeh" (the obsolete form of "okay") is derived from the Choctaw "okeh" is no more warranted than similar claims about the Liberian Djabo "O-ke," the Mandingo "O ke," or the Ulster Scots "Ough, aye!"
This, of course, is absurd.
By any standards of historiography or scholarship the body of concrete evidence is significant, explicit, at this time at least, without any kind of valid refutation. One may, of course, find it deplorable "spiritual and physical degradation" — folklore perpetrated by Indian lovers. But the well-documented fact remains that for over 150 years English speakers have perceived "O.K." as a Choctaw (or at least a Native American) expression and have intentionally and explicitly used it that way.
For a a more detailed, scholarly treatment of this subject, see the paper "The Choctaw Expression 'Okeh' and the Americanism 'Okay.'"
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Revision posted: 10/12/07
