
“On Accident” or “By Accident”? - sudo_bang_bang
https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/on-or-by-accident/
======
mrbig4545
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 older
generations.

But, we have the same problem within the UK, in the north, we have three
meals, breakfast, dinner and tea. In the south they have breakfast, lunch and
dinner. It can be very confusing, especially in films when someone invites
someone round for tea, but there's no food and it's 1pm!

~~~
netnichols
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.

~~~
pc86
I personally say "by accident" and was born in 86 (during the period the
author says speakers are split) and "on accident" has always sounded odd to
me, and almost wrong, although when I was in school I do recall people saying
both with a pretty even split (as much as I can remember, anyway).

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

~~~
madaxe_again
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.

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hrnnnnnn
When they grow up, if enough of them still say "lended", it will be put into
the dictionary.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That one I understand. It was an exception anyway; lended is more
straightforward. Like 'builded' vs 'built'. The sign on our old 1800-era
edifice says "Builded 1838" so I guess they used to use that (or at least
write it that way)

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gilgoomesh
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.

~~~
efaref
It sounds like old-style BASIC exception handling.

    
    
        ON ACCIDENT GOTO EMERGENCYROOM

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

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snake_plissken
Whoa, 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.

~~~
gambiter
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.

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marcosscriven
Just goes to show the arbitrariness of prepositions associated with verbs.
It's one of the hardest things to learn as a foreign language.

I do recall amusement when learning German, attempting to say I travelled 'on'
the bus, only for it to literally mean on the roof of the bus.

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madaxe_again
Perhaps it's just newspeak, catering for the difference between accidents and
deliberate "accidents".

Perhaps it evolved from "accidentally on purpose", which was a pretty 90's
expression.

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JoeAltmaier
Here'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.

~~~
twic
"different to" is the normal form in British English too, although you hear
both.

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Grue3
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.

~~~
ttctciyf
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...](https://www.google.com/search?q="it+was+on+accident"+-"by+accident")

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eddd
I was going to comment "accidentally" but first google result says: Accidently
vs. Accidentally? Dang you english.

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kenbellows
A thought I had while reading: Neal (the author) reports that Barrat found "on
purpose" to be used "to the near exclusion of _by accident_ " by "speakers
__born __after 1995 ". However, Neal then goes on to ask:

> why did the new form suddenly edge out the old in the mid-1990s?

Based on the fact that the years listed in the first section were the _birth_
-years of the speakers, I would guess that the main cultural transition
actually took place around 2000-2005, when speakers born after 1995 would be
developing their dialects.

I suppose it could be argued that the shift must have happened earlier based
on the mixed usage among speakers born as early as 1970, but at any rate, the
complete takeover seems to have happened around the millennium change.

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jstclair
An 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=...](https://books.google.no/books?id=CPKHKvge3Z4C&lpg=PA379&ots=JN3oy4jU14&dq=JL%20Austin%20a%20plea%20for%20excuses&pg=PA379#v=onepage&q=JL%20Austin%20a%20plea%20for%20excuses&f=false)

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monochromatic
Language 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.

~~~
wmil
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.

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shaftway
I 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.

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donatj
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.

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mirimir
I've always said "accidentally", rather than "by accident". To my ear, "by
accident" sounds almost as archaic as "by your leave". Maybe "on accident"
comes from "on [making an] accident".

~~~
frankc
I almost never hear anyone say'on accident' but If I had to guess, it comes
from taking sort of a parallel antonym to 'on purpose'. Did you do it 'on
purpose'? No, I did it 'on accident'. It sounds weird to my ears but there is
some kind of sense to it.

~~~
mirimir
Maybe. But if I follow that path, I get "accidentally" vs "purposefully". The
first is about how it went down, but the second is about how it was carried
out. The opposite of "purposefully" is "carelessly" or "recklessly", no?

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amelius
"On" suggests that there is intention involved. "By" suggests passivity.

~~~
kenbellows
Wouldn't the fact of intention contradict the notion of an accident?

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tfgg
Perhaps that's the subtle humour behind this linguistic change?

"I broke your mug on accident", at the fifth word, the listener/reader thinks
the other person is about to say "on purpose", but suddenly they say "on
accident". Hence it's funny, reduces the tension about them breaking your mug.

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dmuneka
[http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/onaccident.html](http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/onaccident.html)

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ajdlinux
I never hear "on accident" here in Australia.

~~~
hacker234
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.

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

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sullyj3
I was born in January 1995, and "on accident" sounds bizarre to me.

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dvh
"traffic collision"

~~~
mhurron
"new baby"

