okay
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okay
informal A phonetic spelling of "OK," originally used as a facetious initialism of "oll korrect" ("all correct"), part of a fad in Boston and New York in the late 1800s of using incorrect initialisms in place of common phrases.
1. interjection Used to express acceptance, understanding, acknowledgement, etc. A: "Hey, can you give me a ride home?" B: "Okay. Hop in." Okay, okay—we can have pizza for dinner tonight. Just stop whining about it! A: "I'm going out, I'll be back tonight." B: "Okay, see you later."
2. interjection Used as a question word to seek or establish acceptance, understanding, acknowledgement, etc. We're going to move the meeting to Monday, okay? Look, I just want you to understand why I said what I said, okay?
3. adjective Satisfactory or agreeable. Was everything okay with your stay? I hope the food tastes okay. I've never made this recipe before.
4. adjective Fair, fine, or middling; neither especially good nor bad. The movie was only okay. Don't waste your money seeing it in the theater, but it might be worth a rental. My foot feels okay these days, but I'm not ready to run a marathon or anything.
5. adjective Safe; uninjured or unharmed. Sorry for making such a sharp turn there! Is everyone okay? A: "Marty, thank goodness! I was worried sick about you!" B: "I'm okay, Mom, really."
6. adjective Functioning, operating, or working properly. Thankfully, the computers are all okay despite the power surge. A: "Is it possible that the network is down?" B: "No, the network is okay. Something else must be causing the error."
7. adverb In a manner that is neither especially good nor bad. A: "Nice job!" B: "Thanks. I did okay, I guess. I think I probably could have performed a bit better in the middle of the song, but it was fine."
8. noun Approval, authorization, agreement, or endorsement. We can't start work on a new project until we get the okay from the boss. We've gotten okays from three of the four stakeholders. We're just waiting for the last one before we take the next step in development.
9. verb To give approval, authorization, agreement, or endorsement (for something). You'll need the boss to okay any changes you want to make to the budget. The professor okayed my thesis proposal, so now I need to start really digging into my research for it.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
okay
verbSee OK
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
- (Have you) been OK?
- (Is) everything OK?
- (that's) OK by me
- (that's) OK with me
- A-OK
- Are you OK?
- be doing OK
- be doing OK/okay
- be OK
- been okay
- been okay?
- doing OK
- doing okay
- doing okay?
- everything okay?
- everything will be OK
- Everything's going to be all right
- everything's going to be OK
- Everything's going to be okay
- feeling OK
- feeling okay
- feeling okay?
- fine with me
- get the OK
- give (one) the OK
- give somebody/get the OK/okay
- I'll bite
- ok
- OK yah
- okay
- rule OK
- that's OK
- Weird flex, but OK.