“On Accident” or “By Accident”?
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“On Accident” or “By Accident”?
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#2Interesting, and very much an American thing - never heard anyone say 'on accident' here in the UK.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#3"traffic collision"
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#4An interesting companion would be J.L.Austin's "A Plea for Excuses", where he contrasts "by mistake" and "by accident".
(Google books link, but the PDF is available widely)
https://books.google.no/books?id=CPKHKvge3Z4C&lpg=PA379&ots=...
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#5Interesting, and very much an American thing - never heard anyone say 'on accident' here in the UK.
Me either. Although I'm in the "Before around 1970" group, so maybe I'm self-selecting my experience based on my similar-age peer group.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#6Interesting, and very much an American thing - never heard anyone say 'on accident' here in the UK.
Seconded. I've never heard this in the UK from people of any age.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the way "an" sounds when spoken with an American accent. A mishearing and then repetition of "an accident" seems much more plausible to me than confusion with "on purpose".
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#7Interesting, and very much an American thing - never heard anyone say 'on accident' here in the UK.
Me either. Although I'm in the "Before around 1970" group, so maybe I'm self-selecting my experience based on my similar-age peer group.
Funnily, "Me either" is also an americanism that seems rather foreign to me. (Me neither would be more likely to be used in the UK in my experience). I think both are rather informal and so neither is necessarily incorrect.
http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/33544/what-is-the-dif...
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#8The computer programmer in me says both are valid:
"on accident" is a pre-prepared behavior that will be employed when an accident occurs in the future.
"by accident" is metadata accompanying an event, reporting the author or agent that created the event.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me either. Although I'm in the "Before around 1970" group, so maybe I'm self-selecting my experience based on my similar-age peer group.
Funnily, "Me either" is also an americanism that seems rather foreign to me. (Me neither would be more likely to be used in the UK in my experience). I think both are rather informal and so neither is necessarily incorrect. http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/33544/what-is-the-dif...
I never claimed to be any good at English :)
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#10The computer programmer in me says both are valid: "on accident" is a pre-prepared behavior that will be employed when an accident occurs in the future. "by accident" is metadata accompanying an event, reporting the author or agent that created the event.
It sounds like old-style BASIC exception handling.
ON ACCIDENT GOTO EMERGENCYROOM