ORIGIN: Various explanations of the letters have been given; evidence suggests that OK became popular as an abbreviation of oll korrekt, a facetious misspelling of all correct current in the USA in the 1830s, and was then used as a slogan by Van Buren's party in the 1840 US presidential election (Van Buren was born at Kinderhook, near Albany in New York and was known as Old Kinderhook)