“On Accident” or “By Accident”?
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#52Whoa, what? You learn something new everyday on here. I have never heard anyone in the US say "on accident." Does "on accident" even make sense? The preposition "on" in this case implies intent, so who is causing accidents on purpose? And if you are, then it's not really an accident, it's sabotage.
I grew up saying it in Oklahoma. My wife (from Virginia) would always say, "It's BY accident, ON purpose." So just to mess with her I started saying, "ON accident, BY purpose", which sounds just as strange to my ears.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've heard "lent" but never "lended". "I lent a pen off him", "he lent me a pen". Could be a Northern thing though.
Turns out "lent" is actually the past tense of "lend". Not sure where my head was this afternoon.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#54On accident is one of those American sayings that sounds weird to my English ears. Like poop. where did the second p come from??? That said, I think our dialects are merging, (well more likely British English is becoming Americanised, but you guys make all the tv, so that's to be expected), for example, when I was younger no one said "ass", it was always "arse", but nowadays it's nearly always "ass"; except for the o…
Funny, before I read the article I thought that "on accident" must be some British English bastardization since it sounds so weird to my American ears. But I was born in the late 70's and haven't lived in the US since 2000, so maybe that explains it.
As a South African, the first time I saw "on accident" was from an American on IRC.
At the time I assumed he was just one of those uneducated redneck hillbillies I'd heard of who can't English proper. But it turns out that's just how young people speak these days.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#55Language evolves. Sounds like "on accident" is winning, and it'll probably take over completely in another decade or two. But it'll always sound wrong to me.
I've never heard it in Canada. So it seems to be US only...
Actually most of the comments about it say that their children picked it up in elementary school. Given the wide and sudden spread I suspect that this can be traced back to some children's TV show or classroom video.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#56On accident is one of those American sayings that sounds weird to my English ears. Like poop. where did the second p come from??? That said, I think our dialects are merging, (well more likely British English is becoming Americanised, but you guys make all the tv, so that's to be expected), for example, when I was younger no one said "ass", it was always "arse", but nowadays it's nearly always "ass"; except for the o…
/sophomoric humor coming...
It's "poop" because when you say that word, your lips make the same motions that your nether region makes while doing it.
The same is true of the phrase "explosive diarrhea".
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#57I had an interesting similar experience, related to pronunciation of the phrase "en route". I pronounce it the way you'd say it in French ("on route" without the "n" sound). He misheard me as saying "on route" and tried to correct me to something that sounded more like "in route" pronouncing the "en" the way you would in English.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#58Here's another one: In New Zealand they say "they are different to us" instead of the American "they are different from us". Always trips me up. Arbitrary I suppose; any preposition will do because the comparison is in thought-space not physical space.
"different to" is the normal form in British English too, although you hear both.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#59I never hear "on accident" here in Australia.
Likewise.
And I remember the first time I heard an American say "I'm really pissed!" and my mate said, "what have you been drinking?"
I won't even mentions the confusion when an American lady mentioned that she had a sore fanny.
Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
To be clear though, you could contract "would have" as "would've" -- the mistake there is again the mis-hearing as "would of", I suppose.