A-okay

//ˌeɪ.əʊˈkeɪ// adj, slang

adj, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    In perfect order; thoroughly acceptable. colloquial

    "1952, advertisement by Midvac Steels. "The Golden Age of Advertising - the 50s", p. 57, Ed. Jim Heimann, Taschen 2005. A-OK for tomorrow's missile demands."

  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of A-okay. alt-of
Adjective
  1. 1
    in perfect condition or order wordnet

Example

More examples

"1952, advertisement by Midvac Steels. "The Golden Age of Advertising - the 50s", p. 57, Ed. Jim Heimann, Taschen 2005. A-OK for tomorrow's missile demands."

Etymology

First attested in 1952 in the US, popularized in the 1960s by John A. Powers as NASA's public affairs officer for Project Mercury: the "voice of Mercury Control". Intensive form of okay, presumably "all [systems] okay".

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.