OK

"OK" (/oʊkeɪ/; also spelled "okay", "ok", or "O.K.") is a word denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment. "OK", as an adjective, can also express acknowledgment without approval. "OK" has frequently turned up as a loanword in many other languages.

As an adjective, "OK" means "adequate", "acceptable" ("this is OK to send out"), "mediocre" often in contrast to "good" ("the food was OK"); it also functions as an adverb in this sense. As an interjection, it can denote compliance ("OK, I will do that"), or agreement ("OK, that is fine"). As a verb and noun it means "assent" ("the boss OKed the purchase" and "the boss gave his OK to the purchase"). As a versatile discourse marker (or back-channeling item), it can also be used with appropriate voice tone to show doubt or to seek confirmation ("OK?" or "Is that OK?").

Proposed etymologies

Numerous explanations for the origin of the expression have been suggested, but few have been discussed seriously by linguists. The following proposals have found mainstream recognition.

Orenstein & Koppel

Orenstein & Koppel (normally abbreviated to "O&K") was a major German engineering company specialising in railway vehicles, escalators, and heavy equipment. It was founded on April 1, 1876 in Berlin by Benno Orenstein and Arthur Koppel.

Originally a general engineering company, O&K soon started to specialise in the manufacture of railway vehicles. The company also manufactured heavy equipment and escalators. O&K pulled out of the railway business in 1981. Its escalator-manufacturing division was spun off to the company's majority shareholder at the time, Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, in 1996, leaving the company to focus primarily on construction machines. The construction-equipment business was sold to New Holland Construction, at the time part of the Fiat Group, in 1999.

Founding and railway work

The Orenstein & Koppel Company was a mechanical-engineering firm that first entered the railway-construction field, building locomotives and other railroad cars.

First founded in 1892 in Schlachtensee, in the Zehlendorf district of Berlin, and known as the Märkische Lokomotivfabrik, the O&K factories expanded to supply the Imperial German Army under Kaiser Wilhelm II with field-service locomotives, or Feldbahn. O&K supplied all manner of railway equipment to the Army. Because of strained capacity at the Schlachtensee shops, work transferred in 1899 to a site in Nowawes, later Babelsberg, near Potsdam. Around 1908, O&K acquired the firm of Gerlach and König in Nordhausen, building petrol and diesel locomotives there under the trade mark "Montania".

Omar Khadr

Omar Ahmed Algredr Khadr (born September 19, 1986) is a Canadian who was convicted of murder after he allegedly threw a grenade during an armed conflict in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American soldier. At the time, he was 15 years old and had been brought to Afghanistan by his father, who was affiliated with an extreme religious group. During the conflict Khadr was badly wounded, and captured by the Americans. He was subsequently held at Guantanamo Bay for 10 years. After extensive torture, he pleaded guilty to murder in October 2010 to several purported war crimes prior to being tried by a United States military commission. He was the youngest prisoner and last Western citizen to be held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. He accepted an eight-year sentence, not including time served, with the possibility of a transfer to Canada after at least one year to serve the remainder of the sentence.

During a firefight on July 27, 2002, in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan, in which several Taliban fighters were killed, Khadr, not yet 16, was severely wounded. After being detained at Bagram, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. During his detention, he was interrogated by Canadian as well as US intelligence officers.