is o.k. all right?

[Birchy]

I hears that the "O.K." sub for "alright" originated from an illiterate crate marker's abbreviation for "orl korrect". Or is this as spurious as the likes of "Gringo the rushes, oh!"?

[aadenny]

As I understand it, it originated from President Martin Van Buren, otherwise known as 'Old Kinderhook' (aka OK). You might like to look up the following link for detail: http://home.earthlink.net/~mishively/loqu/number13
.html Regds Andrew Denny

[Horsellite]

I have been told that the term "OK" originates from the Royal Observatory at Kew in West London. It was here that all marine timepieces were mended and recalibrated to mean time. Each chronometer was then stamped "Observatory Kew" or OK to show that it had been checked and was safe to use. And so the term OK was created to mean something correct. It was at the Observatory Kew that King George III ran a series of unbiased trials of the John Harrison marine timepieces during the infamous Longitude prize. The Observatory is still there today, though it is no longer used as an observatory.