Okay is a strange word. What it expresses is so essentially human, it has to be a fundamental concept. But as a word, it has a pretty mysterious entomology.
OK (or Okay, or Okeh) basically means: acceptable. Are you OK? Yep, I’m acceptably well. Can I do this? OK, that is acceptable.
It’s one of those middle words: it doesn’t mean great or horrible. It means someplace ordinary. It means normal. Which is how we are most of the time.
For a word which is so universal, and which expresses such universal condition it’s amazingly young. It seems to appear in American English less than 200 years ago (sometime around 1840). And it seems to appear in several places at once: an abbreviation for Boston Slang (Oll Korrect), or a derivation of a West African word from Wolof, or somebody’s initials?
The other weird thing is it’s synonyms. If the concept is universal but the word is young, maybe it’s synonyms are much older? Words like good, (all) right, acceptable, agreement. I’m sure there is some common Indo-European root word for the concept but it doesn’t leap out at me right now. I’m sure it will in the morning once I’ve had a chance to sleep on it.
Til then it’s just one of life’s little mysteries. Ok?
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