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Those Ubiquitous Initials and the American Presidency
O.K., OK, okeh, and okay are just a few of the different spellings for a word that has as many different meanings as it does spellings. When used as an adjective it is used to denote acceptability, "This is okay to pass." When used as an interjection, it can denote compliance, "Okay, I will do that", and agreement, "Okay, sounds good." When used as a noun or a verb it denotes assent, "The senate okayed the proposal". Other than the common colloquialisms we refer the word to mean today, "O.K." has a unique lineage that dates back to several presidencies.
Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, talked up his hometown Kinderhook, NY so persistently that his political colleagues called him Old Kinderhook. Van Buren's nickname, Old Kinderhook, is often linked to the Americanism, O.K. Van Buren cheerfully embraced this nickname and at some point took to signing letters by the initials of "O.K." His presidential slogan, "Vote for OK" was also much snappier than his Dutch name. Either way, O.K. had staying power as an expression but his presidential slogan was soon trodden by William Henry Harrison campaign's song, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", which spoiled Van Buren's bid for re-election in 1841.
In 1790 there was a discrepancy over the word's first usage when Andrew Jackson signed a court record, ending with the initials O.K. However, the record was ...
