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“On Accident” or “By Accident”?

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Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#21

Post by balabaster »

d_theorist wrote: post #12
pidg wrote: post #2

Interesting, and very much an American thing - never heard anyone say 'on accident' here in the UK.

Neither have I. Sounds very strange to my ears.

I've never heard 'on accident' out of a British person, even living in Canada. I've heard it out of many Canadians and Americans alike - but I've equally heard many of them use 'by accident'. I hadn't registered the generational divide though. I thought it was just commonly used in both forms [even though I personally correct them in my head every time they do it]. It grates on me when they use "I could care less".

What also bothers me that I've heard out of many British people, but never yet a Canadian or American is 'can I lend that thing from you?'... you can't lend something from its owner. As the lender, you are the owner of the property to be lent. Thus you can lend something to someone or borrow it from them, but you can't borrow it to someone or lend it from someone.

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#22

Post by ttctciyf »

Grue3 wrote: post #18

I'm not a native English speaker, but I don't think I have ever seen "on accident" used on the Internet. Do people really say "I did this on accident"? It just sounds wrong.

In a naive google search it gets masked by discussions like this one - but some extra filtering can find examples: https://www.google.com/search?q="it+was+on+accident"+-"by+ac...

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#24

Post by madaxe_again »

pidg wrote: post #2

Interesting, and very much an American thing - never heard anyone say 'on accident' here in the UK.

No, but we have a similar one - lend and borrow have become interchangeable. "Can you borrow me an X" or "I lended (not even word AFAIK) it from him" is one I hear often from younger folks.

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#25

Post by twcooper »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #8

The 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.

In the first case, it would be more clear to say "upon accident."

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#28

Post by TeMPOraL »

efaref wrote: post #10
gilgoomesh wrote: post #8

The 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

Or modern JavaScript event handling. Button.onAccident(function() { ... });

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#29

Post by forthefuture »

p8952 wrote: post #6
pidg wrote: post #2

Interesting, 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".

"An" in American sounds like "Anne", so I don't think that explains it. As an aside I've never heard someone say "on accident" so it might just be stupid people. Another good example is "would of" instead of "would have".
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