The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-10-31
Origin of 70 K"
IAmerican Magazine of History.l


 In the language of Choctaw indians, one of the most frequently recurring ex- pressions Is the emphatic oke with which an affirmation or denial is concluded. The oke (pronounced with strong accent on the last syllable) is one of the substi- tutes for the copulative verb to be, which is wanting in Choctaw. Oke, as pro- nounced in Cnoctaw, has exactly the same sound as the alphabetic pronuncia- ton of the letters O. K in English.
 The meaning of the expression, as nearly as it can be conveyed in English, IS: That is true; that is all so' A few examples ou. of many ,ha, might be cited will illustrate this. "The Choctaw Indian is good fellow" is expressed thus Hattack api huma Chahta achuk- nah oke, in which hattack api huma means "lndian Literally, man body red J achukmah means good" and oke IS the copulauve expression, "it IS so." In Rev. Cyrus Byington's Choctaw new testament the first sentence of Matt. V, I2 :: "Ye are the 1t of the earth is: Gakni in huppi huchchia hoke, literally; 1.-the earth its salt ye; that is so."
 To General Andrew Jackson is aitrib- uted the introduction of the Choctaw ! word into our Anglo-American speech. Before the war of 1872, in voyages up and do wn the Mlssisslppi, and in trading ex. petitions overland from Nashville, Ten- nessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, through the Choctaw Nation, he was brought into frequent communication with the Choc- jaws.
 General Jackson. as everybody knows, was prone to the use of downright an energetic Methods of assertion. Hearing this emphatic oke so frequently uttered by the Choctaw people, he learned the meaning conveyed by it to the Choctaw mind, and appropriated it, out of hand to his own purpose. From him it passed over to the multitude. This account of the origin of O. K. has been current in the south tor many years. If not true, 1t is, to say the least, ben trovato.
 No one who has ever read an auto. graph letter of General Jackson will easily credit the story that he was in the habit, when he was president of the U nited States, of indors,ag, in kaltem blue, ap- pllcations for office with the letters o. K. under the belief that these were the proper initials for" all correct" Jackson w6S AO SSHOIdL DuI nG was QOt so 2rOSSlV igno of English orthography as to fall into blunder of that sort. He may have Indorsed documents with the letters O. K as a jocular symbol of his favorite Choctaw expression. The story that these letters were seriously intended by him as an aobreviation of "oll korrect" was probably, as MT. George Bancroft sug- gests, an a pos!eriori invention of the enemy-to wit, the Whigs-during the hot political contests in the days of the roaring 4os. ~l1n
 That the abbreviation O. K. was coined by Jackson himself and used by him long years before it passed into current slang finds curious COT 6rmation in an extract from the old court records of Sumner county, Tennessee, quoted by Parton in his Life of Jackson" vol. D. I36
 October 6. I7oo, Andrew Jackson, Esq, proved bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Casper Mausker for a negro man, which was O. K" "A common western mistake" adds MT. Parton, .for O. R which means ordered recorded. Hence, perhaps, the saying o. K.
 Is 1t more likely that the O. K of this entry was suggested by Ackson himself as brief way of saying, after the Cuoctaw fashion, that the claim had been legally made out2