O.K.

[Alan H. Hartley]

You're right on the mark, Sally. Here's what the OED has to say:

O.K.
Apparently from the initial letters of oll (or orl) korrect, jocular
alteration or colloq. pronunc. of ‘all correct’: see A. W. Read in Amer.
Speech XXXVIII (1963), XXXIX (1964), etc.
>From the detailed evidence provided by A. W. Read it seems clear that
O.K. first appeared as a jocular alteration of the initial letters of
all correct (i.e. orl korrect) in 1839, and that in 1840 it was used as
an election slogan for ‘Old Kinderhook’. Thence by stages it made its
way into general use. Other suggestions, e.g. that O.K. represents the
Choctaw oke ‘it is’, or French au quai, or that it derives from a word
in the West African language Wolof via slaves in the southern States of
America, all lack any form of acceptable documentation.

The most recent editions of the American Heritage and Random House
dictionaries, both very reliable in their etymologies, concur.

Alan