Despite Van Buren's loss and the subsequent dissolution of the O.K. Democratic Club, the gesture has since been widely used since to mean "all is well" or "good" in the United States. As a gesture, its connotation is more positive than the word "OK", which may mean a thing is merely mediocre, satisfactory at only the most basic level, as in, "The food was OK." The gesture is commonly understood as a signal of approval, and is sometimes used synonymously with the Western "thumbs up" gesture.