Okeh or ok!

This is the word which is so common now that it is a part of our life!

You know, the question as well as the answer to this word is the same word and the word is the word!

In fact in our emergency training called the BLS, we also use this word first after ‘ARE YOU’!

It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet. 

Now now! Do lot get mad and force me to ask you that question!

Well, the question and the word is, “Are you OK!?”

So ‘OK’ can denote approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or a even sign of indifference!


It’s very probably the most widely recognized word in the world. And its origin story is literally a joke!

The 1820s and 1830s shared a linguistic fad with today! an appreciation for deliberate misspellings (DOPE ain’t it!?

Of course I can literally see the fans of the ‘Victorian’ language cringe when someone writes DUNNIT or DAT or DUNNO! The would joke on what all things you could have done by saving so much time!

Now this trend, which had humorists adopting now-cringey bumpkin personas with ignorance manifested in uneducated spellings, turned no go into know go and no use into know yuse! Of course it was only for those who were liberal and free! Those who played around with the rules!

Apparently even abbreviations were not immune, and no go became K.G!
So too all right became O.W., as an abbreviation for oll wright!

And finally our dear friend OK was actually an abbreviation for Oll Korrect! A joke gone too far! Of course it would have been forgotten then and there are a joke which must not have been repeated if not for a presidential election!

In this almost funny incident, a nickname became the fad!

In the presidential election of 1840, Martin Van Buren was given the nickname of “Old Kinderhook” because of his hometown of Kinderhook, NY!

The Van Buren supporters who joined “OK Clubs” nationwide were themselves, they proclaimed, “OK.”
Their campaign was memorable enough to have both popularized the word and to have hijacked the story of its origin: there are many who still believe this to be which is “Old Kinderhook” is the original meaning of OK!

In fact there are other proposed origin of this word one of which was OKEH!

This most persistent of OK ancestors was a Choctaw word. This etymon was suggested in 1885, with Andrew Jackson supposedly having borrowed the word from members of the Choctaw tribe. Woodrow Wilson was a believer: he wrote okeh on papers he approved. He was asked why he did not use O.K. “Because it is wrong,” he replied!

Of course he was OKEH not OK!

Now whatever be the history, it is never a bad time to ask anyone this question! It may be your old friend going through challenges or your partner feeling dull or your children being quiet or even your doctor who is having a hectic life!

Simply ask, are you OK!?

Also not only was he OK, he was one of the best singers! That was Bhupinder Singh!

Now listen to some of his songs and you will definitely feel OK!