O.K. Many word authorities believe that O.K. comes from the nickname of Martin Van Buren (1782–1862), who rose from potboy in a tavern to president of the United States. A colorful character (as vice president he presided over the Sen- ate with dueling pistols on his desk), Van Buren was elected president in 1836. He became an eponym, however, during the campaign of 1840, when he ran for reelection in a tight race against “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” General William Henry Harrison, legendary hero who fought against the Indians at Tippecanoe, and Virginian John Tyler. The election of 1840 brought with it the first modern political campaign—mostly to President Van Buren’s disadvantage. One popular advertising stunt was “to keep the ball rolling for Harrison”—10-foot “vic- tory balls,” made of tin and leather and imprinted with the can- didate’s name, were rolled from city to city for as far as 300 miles. Harrison’s followers, trying to identify Van Buren with the aristocracy, christened the general the “log cabin and hard cider candidate,” and tagged Van Buren “Little Van the Used Up Man,” “King Martin the First,” “The Enchanter,” “The Red Fox,” “The Kinderhook Fox,” “Little Magician,” and several oth- er of the derogatory nicknames he had earned over the years. But “Old Kinderhook,” a title bestowed upon the president from the name of his birthplace in Kinderhook, N.Y., sounded better to his supporters, better even than “the Sage, Magician, or Wizard of Kinderhook.” In order to stem the tide, a group in New York formed the Democratic O.K. Club, taking their ini- tials from “Old Kinderhook.” These mystifying initials, appeal- ing to man’s love of being on the inside of events, became a sort of rallying cry for the Democrats. One contemporary newspa- per account reported “how about 500 stout, strapping men” of the O.K. Club marched to break up a rival Whig meeting where “they passed the word O.K. . . . from mouth to mouth, a cheer was given, and they rushed into the hall like a torrent.” The mysterious battle cry spread rapidly and soon acquired the meaning “all right, all correct,” probably because “Old Kinder- hook” or O.K. was all right, all correct to his supporters. But neither mystification, ruffians, nor new words did Van Buren any good, because voters remembered the panic of 1837, and Harrison defeated him in his bid for reelection. Not that victory was any blessing to Harrison; the old general contracted pneu- monia on the day of his inauguration and died shortly thereaf- ter. Scores of interesting theories had been offered on the origin of O.K. before Columbia Professor Allen Walker Read suppos- edly laid the ghost to rest with his Saturday Review article (July 19, 1941), tracing the word to the president who was O.K. Most etymologists accept Read’s explanation but fail to mention an important qualification. Read established an earlier date than the campaign of 1840 for the first use of O.K. He showed that the expression was used in the Boston Morning Post, March 23, 1839, in the same sense—all correct—by editor Charles Gor- don Greene but claims that the word got a second independent start in the 1840 campaign and really owes its popularity to Old Kinderhook’s candidacy. No earlier reliable date than Read’s for the use of O.K. has been found, and so the matter is apparently settled for all time—although other scholars have recently come up with entirely different explanations that etymologists are still debating. It will prove difficult, however, to take the credit for O.K. away from President Van Buren. The word hon- oring his name is undoubtedly the best known of American ex- pressions. International in use and what H. L. Mencken calls “the most shining and successful Americanism ever invented,” O.K. does service as almost any part of speech. Surprisingly, the effort to give it an antonym (nokay) has failed, but the expres- sion A-O.K. has gained currency from space flights, and the older oke-doke, from an abbreviation of one of its forms, okey, is still heard in everyday speech. O.K. is used more often than salud in Spain, has displaced English right-o, and is spelled o-ke in the Djabo dialect of Liberia. The most universally used of all eponyms in any language since World War II, it is inscribed al- most everywhere, from the town of Okay, Oklahoma, to the pieces of equipment marked with O.K.s that are possibly on the Moon. However, the useful little word may become even small- er and more useful. To this writer it sounds like k with more frequency every year, and perhaps someday that will be the spelling.