Editing OK (section)

===Choctaw===
In "All Mixed Up", the folk singer [[Pete Seeger]] sang that ''OK'' was of [[Choctaw]] origin,{{sfn|Fay|2007}} as the dictionaries of the time tended to agree. Three major American reference works (Webster's, New Century, Funk & Wagnalls) cited this etymology as the probable origin until as late as 1961.{{sfn|Fay|2007}}

The earliest written evidence for the Choctaw origin is provided in work by the Christian missionaries [[Cyrus Byington]] and Alfred Wright in 1825.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} These missionaries ended many sentences in their translation of the Bible with the [[Grammatical particle|particle]] "okeh", meaning "it is so",{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} which was listed as an alternative spelling in the 1913 Webster's.<ref name=okeh>{{cite web |url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/okeh |title=okeh |work=Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary |year= 1913 |access-date=29 December 2014 |via=The Free Dictionary by Farlex |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141229203357/http://www.thefreedictionary.com/okeh |archive-date=2014-12-29}}</ref>

Byington's ''Dictionary of the Choctaw Language'' confirms the ubiquity of the "okeh" particle,{{sfn|Byington|1915}} and his ''Grammar of the Choctaw Language'' calls the particle ''-keh'' an "affirmative contradistinctive", with the "distinctive" o- prefix.{{sfn|Byington|1870|p=14}}

{{blockquote|Subsequent Choctaw spelling books de-emphasized the spellings lists in favor of straight prose, and they made use of the particle[,] but they too never included it in the word lists or discussed it directly.  The presumption was that the use of particle "oke" or "hoke" was so common and self-evident as to preclude any need for explanation or discussion for either its Choctaw or non-Choctaw readership.{{sfn|Fay|2007}}}}

The [[Choctaw language]] was one of the languages spoken at this time in the [[Southeastern United States]] by a tribe with significant contact with African slaves.<ref>{{cite book|first=Robert Elliot |last= Flickinger |year=1911 |title=The Choctaw Freedmen and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23321/23321-h/23321-h.htm|publisher=gutenberg.org}}</ref> The major language of trade in this area, [[Mobilian Jargon]], was based on Choctaw-Chickasaw, two [[Muskogean]]-family languages. This language was used, in particular, for communication with the slave-owning<ref name="miles">[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZVQvhgEuKZMC&pg=PA170 Tiya Miles, ''Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom''], University of California Press, 2005, pp. 170-173</ref><ref name="enc">[http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SL003.html "SLAVERY"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101018205458/https://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SL003.html |date=18 October 2010}}, ''Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture'', Oklahoma Historical Society, Retrieved 29 December 2014</ref> [[Cherokee]] (an [[Iroquoian]]-family language).{{sfn|Badger|1971}}{{sfn|Hopkins}} For the three decades prior to the Boston abbreviation fad, the Choctaw had been in extensive negotiation with the U.S. government,<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = DeRosier | first1 = Arthur Jr. | year = 1967 | title = Andrew Jackson and Negotiations for The Removal of the Choctaw Indians | journal = The Historian | volume = 29 | issue = 3| pages = 343–362| doi = 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1967.tb01782.x }}</ref> after having fought alongside them at the [[Battle of New Orleans]].

Arguments for a more Southern origin for the word note the tendency of English to adopt loan words in [[language contact]] situations, as well as the ubiquity of the OK particle. Similar particles exist in native language groups distinct from Iroquoian ([[Algonquian (language)|Algonquian]], [[Cree]] cf. "[http://www.creedictionary.com/search/index.php?q=ekosi&scope=1 ekosi]").