“On Accident” or “By Accident”? • Hacker News Board

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#61

Post by wmil » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 6:17 AM UTC

mrbig4545 wrote: post #16

On 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…

Interestingly Google ngrams has 'poop' as more popular, even in British English.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=poo%2Cpoop&yea...

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#62

Post by donatj » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 7:16 AM UTC

I was born in the first half of the 80s and the only person I've ever known to use "on accident" is my sister born towards the end of the eighties. It sounds stupid and myself and my family have always corrected her. I wasn't aware this was some sort of societal movement.

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#63

Post by fortyseven » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 2:06 PM UTC

Could exposure to the internet and social networking have any bearing on this?

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#64

Post by neverknowsbest » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #24

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.

'lended + from' is new to me, only heard 'lended + to' in the past...

One I noticed in popular use a few years ago (Canada): the word "itch" as a verb, i.e.: "I itched it" "he was itching himself"

Sounds odd to me.

Re: “On Accident” or “By Accident”?

#65

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 3:11 PM UTC

lstamour wrote: post #60

forthefuture wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

[deleted]