Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulpmeister
First appeared in popular print--the US press-- as 'O.K.' It is an abbreviation, but not of 'okay'. The "Oll Korrect" version of its origin is most likely the real one, as it first surfaced in print as fad wordplay in the first half of the 19th century in north-east USA. The game was to come up with improbable abbreviations through jocular mis-spellings. There were quite a few other similarly derived abbreviations, but they died out. It was then reinforced by a political campaign where O.K. was part of the slogan. It never died after that, and the 'okay' version is in effect a phonetic spelling-out of the word.
An analagous example is snafu. It is an acronym, one of many which arose in WW2 using the letters 'fu'. They have all faded away except snafu (although fubar lingers as a barely visible ghost).
I'm inclined to doubt the liklihood of Choctaw (okeh), which has quite a different meaning, or Scottish (och aye), which means 'oh yes' as the origin. O K doesn't have a clear path of propagation from these sources.
You can doubtless find words/phrases sounding very much like "okay" in several other languages, but the NE USA fad wordplay origin fits the proven growth pattern of "OK/okay" usage.
Not that it matters. Both are historically correct, and usage would depend on context. My own instinct, specially in dialogue, would be to go with okay, and in narrative, for consistency, stick with okay.
A character might easily use OK, and so would the author, if it is quoting say a hastily scribbled note by a character--or a text message. Whether you do it as O. K. with spaces, O.K. without, or just OK, is a matter of choice.
You could of course use "okelly dokelly"....
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I always thought it was related to the famous gunfight at O.K. corral
