OK
/ˌəʊˈkeɪ/
"ok" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“OK” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #750 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #750
- frequency rank, English
- 2
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Endorsement; approval; acceptance; acquiescence.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | OK |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌəʊˈkeɪ/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #750 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “OK” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for OK is 2 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌəʊˈkeɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #750 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Endorsement; approval; acceptance; acquiescence.".
Zero misspellings are on record for OK in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "on", "or", "op", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Origin disputed. Wikipedia lists many possible etymologies, of which the most widely accepted is that it is an abbreviation of oll/orl korrect, a comical spelling of all correct, which first appeared in print in The Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, as… The correct English form is OK, spelled O-K.
Definition
- 1Endorsement; approval; acceptance; acquiescence.
Etymology
Origin disputed. Wikipedia lists many possible etymologies, of which the most widely accepted is that it is an abbreviation of oll/orl korrect, a comical spelling of all correct, which first appeared in print in The Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, as part of a fad for similar fanciful abbreviations in the United States during the late 1830s. The expression became popular through its use in the presidential campaign of Martin Van Buren in 1840, who was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and then slowly acquired other meanings. The Choctaw word oke, okeh (“it is so”), common in Choctaw translations of the Bible, could also explain OK's variety of affirmative definitions. Additionally, okeh was the most common etymology of okay in dictionaries until the 1960s, and linguistically predates Boston's O.K.. However, this theory suffers from the fact that the Choctaw language was relatively obscure and generally spoken (sometimes in a pidgin form) mainly with African-American slaves.
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “OK”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is O-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˌəʊˈkeɪ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “on” - see the side-by-side comparison. OK vs on
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.