Copacetic

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /kəʊ.pəˈsɛt.ɪk/

Definitions

1. Satisfactory, acceptable, or in good order
2. Everything is in a satisfactory state or functioning smoothly, indicating a sense of agreement and harmony among all involved elements
3. Being in a good or agreeable condition without problems

Etymology: Irving Bacheller, a best-selling American novelist, is the leading candidate for the word's inventor. In his 1919 book "A Man for the Ages," about Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, he gave a fictional character a private vocabulary, and the spelling "copasetic" appears there. Its spread was helped by the 1920 song "At the New Jump Steady Ball." Other accounts link it to the dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who certainly helped popularize it, and some suggest it grew out of African American speech in the Southern United States in the late 19th or early 20th century. None of these origin stories has supporting evidence, so the true source remains unsettled. Several proposed etymologies have been rejected or doubted. Suggested links to Cajun French "coup esètique," to an Italian-American "copasetti," and to Chinook Jargon "copasenee" lack evidence, and a derivation from Hebrew "hakól b'séder" ("everything is in order") has been rejected. The claim that it comes from criminals saying "the cop is on the settee" is a fanciful invention.

Synonyms: fine, acceptable, satisfactory, good, all right

Antonyms: unsatisfactory, poor, bad, unacceptable, problematic