There are infinite words in the human language. Not many are instantly, internationally recognizable—but there is one word that we use on a daily basis, a word that has spread to almost every living language. It is probably the most widely spoken word in the world. We use it every so often, without even realizing it. During phone calls, in daily conversations, while texting. And that one word is built only out of two letters: ‘OK’.

There have been several supposed origins of the word. Some say it had West African roots, or perhaps it came from the Greek phrase ‘óla kalá’ (all good), or maybe the Scottish ‘och aye’. But the true origins come from 1830s Boston.

At the time, young ‘intellectuals’ created a trend of intentionally misspelling abbreviations. They had phrases like ‘KC’ for ‘’Knuff Ced’ and ‘OW’ for ‘Oll Wright’. One of these were, of course, ‘OK’ for ‘Oll Korrect’.

‘All Correct’—the normal spelling of the phrase—was something people of the time used to communicate. It was usually used to verify that everything was in order. ‘OK’ first appeared in the media on the 23rd of March, 1839, in the Boston Morning Post. It spread through various newspapers around the United States. It was even used by the then presidential candidate Martin Van Buren in his campaign. Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York; earning him the nickname ‘Old Kinderhook’. His campaigners stated that Old Kinderhook was Oll Korrect. And the campaign seemingly worked, since he was eventually elected as the 8th U.S. President.

Yet it was the telegraph that really made OK’s popularity skyrocket. When the telegraph was invented, people could communicate more efficiently. OK was not only short, the letters that made it were easy to type in Morse Code. People began using ‘OK’ more and more often. It eventually became ingrained into vocabulary. It spread around the world, becoming a globally understood word. Now, it can be used as a ‘neutral affirmation’, a way of saying how the food was, a confirmation at the end of a sentence…the list goes on. It’s incredible how one Bostonian fad became a worldwide phrase.