English Explanatory Dictionary

OK

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. Endorsement; approval; acceptance; acquiescence.
verb
  1. To approve; to accept; to acquiesce to.
  2. To confirm by activating a button marked OK.
adj
  1. All right, acceptable, permitted.
  2. Satisfactory, reasonably good; not exceptional.
  3. Satisfied (with); willing to accept a state of affairs.
  4. In good health or a good emotional state.
adv
  1. Satisfactorily, sufficiently well.
intj
  1. Used to indicate acknowledgement or acceptance.
  2. Used to dismiss a dialog box or confirm a prompt.
  3. Used to introduce a sentence in order to draw attention to the importance of what is being said.
  4. Used in turn-taking, serving as a request to the speaker to grant the turn to the interrupter.
  5. Used to sarcastically or sardonically indicate agreement with the previous statement.
name
  1. Abbreviation of Oklahoma: a state of the United States.
noun
  1. Karaoke.
adj
  1. Alternative letter-case form of OK.
name
  1. A language family spoken in Papua New Guinea.
name
  1. Alternative form of Ok.: Abbreviation of Oklahoma: a state of the United States.
intj
  1. Alternative form of OK (“okay”).

Pronunciation

/ˌəʊˈkeɪ/ /ˌoʊˈkeɪ/ en-us-okay.ogg /əˈkeɪ/

Word forms

OK OKs OK's O.K. okay O. K. okeh okey okie OKing OK'ing OKed OK'd OK'ed more OK OKer most OK OKest OK.

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.

Synonyms

approval endorsement green light go-ahead nod thumbs up approve greenlight allowed all right permissible adequate not bad satisfactory fine well adequately satisfactorily okey-dokey okeh okey k 'kay m'kay A-OK now now then Oklahoma Okla Okla.

Antonyms

NG forbidden bad inadequate poor unsatisfactory ill poorly sick under the weather unwell badly inadequately unsatisfactorily

Related words

oll korrect 👌

Derived words

A-OK A-okay Horn OK Please k 'kay kthxbye m'kay okay OK, boomer OK'er okey-dokey OKish OK please OK, zoomer you OK
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