Dear Matthew Alice: What does the term O.K. stand for? We’ve all used it as long as we could talk, I’ll bet 90 percent of us haven’t a clue as to what it means. For all we know, we could be telling someone they’re Off Key or Off Kilter. Please help. — Bob, e-mailworld

The 90 percent of us who haven’t a clue should be smugly pleased to know that the 10 percent who think they know are wrong (to me, even more satisfying than being right). A brief summary of misguided information: O.K. is probably not short for “Oil Korrect.” But that explanation, published in a Boston newspaper in 1839 as a sort of joke, is the first known written reference to “O.K.” The O.K. Club in New York (circa 1840), political supporters of President Martin “Old Kinderhook” Van Buren, is also not the origin of the expression. His cronies just capitalized on an already-known slang term to make Martin seem like an O.K. kinda guy. Could the expression come from the West African words waw-ke or o-ke, which mean, roughly, “okay”? Or the Haitian port of Aux Cayes (“oh-kay”)? Its special rum was described as “Aux Cayes.” Some say it’s Choctaw (okeh), maybe French (from langued’oc).... (Fill in your best guess here.) “O.K.” is understood by virtually everybody on the planet, no matter what their native language; but not one of us knows where it came from.

July 13 update

Matthew Alice: I thought it was determined long ago that “OK” was phonetic for the Scots “Och, aye.” — Ziggy, the Net

Och, nae, McZig. Just another bonnie guess.

July 27 update

Where did the expression O.K. come from? — the question that wouldn’t die. The latest reply to my reply comes from an anonymous someone with access to a ballpoint pen, envelope, stamp, Xerox machine, and Post-its. Affixed to an article about the term “O.K.” is a note reading, “R — Matthew Alice on 6/22 was an idiotic moron.” Heck, Matthew Alice was an idiotic moron for most of the ’70s. If I’m down to only one day in ’95, it’s a miraculous transformation. The envelope was addressed to the Reader in general, not to me in particular, so I guess it was meant as a warning to my co-workers. It did not come as news to any of them. But on to the “O.K.” stuff. According to an article in the October 1990 Americana magazine, “O.K.” did originate as a sort of linguistic joke in that Boston newspaper in the 1830s and was spread around the country by the O.K. Club of New York, political supporters of Martin “Old Kinderhook” Van Buren. Americana cites the Columbia University journal American Speech as its source. No question that Van Buren’s claque made the expression nationally known; I just said they didn’t make it up. Other word experts (aside from the American Speech contributor) are more circumspect about O.K.’s origins, listing the Boston reference as the first seen in print. Okay? Okay.