Can you believe it?!! the word "OKAY" is now 177 years old

    The word first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post to make fun of a rival paper.
    Okay has become one of the most versatile words in the English Language, as used today, it can mean everything from "just fantastic" to "out of bodily danger." or "fine" and other meanings. But in its early days, the standby was just a dumb joke.
     As Allan Metcalf details in OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word  

"okay made its first printed appearance in the March 23, 1839 issue of the Boston Morning Post, as part of a playful diatribe directed at a rival paper, the Providence Journal. After quoting the Journal's description of an outing by the Anti- Bell-Ringing Society, the Post critiqued their account as follows (emphasis ours): "We said not a word about our deputation passing “through the city” of Providence.—We said our brethren were going to New York in the Richmond, and they did go, as per Post of Thursday. The “Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells,” is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train -band, would have his “contribution box,” et ceteras, o.k. —all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward. " 

The word "ok’ first appeared in print 177 years ago on Wednesday, March 24 1839 as a jab thrown in a rivalry between Boston and Providence 

    While the word may have survived the test of time, the humor has not. The joke, at the expense of the Providence Journal, is that ‘o.k.’ does not stand for ‘all correct’, but for a misspelled, phonetic version of the phrase.

  There is robust scholarly debate over the spoken origins of the word, different theories trace it back to Greek, Scottish, Choctaw, Wolof, or Mandingo, all of which contain similar sounding words to express correctness or agreement.  But according to me, the fact remains that if the Boston journal had not used the word jokingly to throw a jab at their counterpart (providence journal) the word might have not been born even till today. So crazy jokes do bring about good lasting inventions