I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
It's a natural enough abbreviation. However, one curious aspect of it is that
it always seems to take the first-person possessive form.
No one says "That's their bad" or "that's your bad" and no one says
"It would be a bad to turn left here."
So what's my question?
Er... I don't have one.
What's my point?
I just made it.

Paul Epstein

Paul Epstein <pepstein5@gmail.com> writes:
>it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
>saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".

bad, noun: that which is bad

1616 T'exchange the bad for better.

my bad, interjection: colloquial (originally and chiefly U.S.). With
possessive: a person's fault; responsibility for a mistake, blunder,
etc. Originally and chiefly in "my bad" (used mainly as int.).

1981 Slang Teen Talk... My bad—admission of a mistake,
as "Sorry, my bad".

1986 (basketball) My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after
making a bad pass or missing an assignment.

1997 (parenting) Sorry I lost your CD. It's my bad.

2000 Twice in the past two weeks, the league has dialed up Cowher
at Three Rivers Stadium and said, "Oops, our bad."

On 1 Nov 2023 15:05:06 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

>Paul Epstein <pepstein5@gmail.com> writes:
>>it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
>>saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
>
> bad, noun: that which is bad
>
> 1616 T'exchange the bad for better.
>
> my bad, interjection: colloquial (originally and chiefly U.S.). With
> possessive: a person's fault; responsibility for a mistake, blunder,
> etc. Originally and chiefly in "my bad" (used mainly as int.).
>
> 1981 Slang Teen Talk... My bad—admission of a mistake,
> as "Sorry, my bad".
>
> 1986 (basketball) My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after
> making a bad pass or missing an assignment.
>
> 1997 (parenting) Sorry I lost your CD. It's my bad.
>
> 2000 Twice in the past two weeks, the league has dialed up Cowher
> at Three Rivers Stadium and said, "Oops, our bad."
>

I immediately flashed on Buffy (in Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
saying My Bad -- therefore, I suspect that the series popularized
it (later 1990s).

--
Rich Ulrich

On 01/11/2023 15:47, Paul Epstein wrote:
> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
> It's a natural enough abbreviation. However, one curious aspect of it is that
> it always seems to take the first-person possessive form.
> No one says "That's their bad" or "that's your bad" and no one says
> "It would be a bad to turn left here."
> So what's my question?
> Er... I don't have one.
> What's my point?
> I just made it.
>

I see no reason why "my bad" should be confined to the first person.

my bad, your bad, his bad.

Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."

Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
examples in the wild. It came up blank.

Paul Epstein wrote:

> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".

I never liked it.

> It's a natural enough abbreviation.

I find it illogical. "Fault" is just as short as "bad".

--
Bertel, Denmark

On 2023-11-01, Rich Ulrich wrote:

> On 1 Nov 2023 15:05:06 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:
>
>>Paul Epstein <pepstein5@gmail.com> writes:
>>>it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
>>>saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
>>
>> bad, noun: that which is bad
>>
>> 1616 T'exchange the bad for better.
>>
>> my bad, interjection: colloquial (originally and chiefly U.S.). With
>> possessive: a person's fault; responsibility for a mistake, blunder,
>> etc. Originally and chiefly in "my bad" (used mainly as int.).
>>
>> 1981 Slang Teen Talk... My bad—admission of a mistake,
>> as "Sorry, my bad".
>>
>> 1986 (basketball) My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after
>> making a bad pass or missing an assignment.
>>
>> 1997 (parenting) Sorry I lost your CD. It's my bad.
>>
>> 2000 Twice in the past two weeks, the league has dialed up Cowher
>> at Three Rivers Stadium and said, "Oops, our bad."
>>
>
> I immediately flashed on Buffy (in Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
> saying My Bad -- therefore, I suspect that the series popularized
> it (later 1990s).

I think that's where I first heard it.

--
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete. (Buckminster Fuller)

occam wrote:

> Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."
>
> Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
> examples in the wild. It came up blank.

Try an Ngram with "my bad,your bad,his bad,her bad"

--
Bertel, Denmark

Paul Epstein:
>> ...it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember
>> hearing people saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake"...
Bertel Lund Hansen:
> I find it illogical.

I don't use it myself, but it's not illogical: it's just an
adjective-to-noun conversion.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "It's a massive 'Get out of Euclid free' card."
msb@vex.net | --Matt Parker

On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 10:47:49 AM UTC-4, Paul Epstein wrote:

> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
> It's a natural enough abbreviation. However, one curious aspect of it is that
> it always seems to take the first-person possessive form.
> No one says "That's their bad" or "that's your bad" and no one says
> "It would be a bad to turn left here."
> So what's my question?
> Er... I don't have one.
> What's my point?
> I just made it.

I first encountered "my bad" right here in AUE, from Nathan Sanders,
the California-born linguist who at the time was employed by the
University of Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia). I was mystified.

On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 8:47:49 AM UTC-6, Paul Epstein wrote:
> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
> It's a natural enough abbreviation. However, one curious aspect of it is that
> it always seems to take the first-person possessive form.
> No one says "That's their bad" or "that's your bad" and no one says
> "It would be a bad to turn left here."
> So what's my question?
> Er... I don't have one.
> What's my point?
> I just made it.

I have actually used in the third person, just jocularly. I think I first heard it
from a guy named who I used to play volleyball with in the '90s, who often said
it even about things that weren't his fault. Sometimes when he said, "My bad,"
I'd say, "Bob's bad." Of course that could be misunderstood as "Bob is bad,"
which could be misunderstood, since it could mean either he's good or he's
bad. (He was distinctly better at volleyball than me.)

--
Jerry Friedman

On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 4:47:22 PM UTC, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> Paul Epstein wrote:
>
> > I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
> > it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
> > saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
> I never liked it.
> > It's a natural enough abbreviation.
> I find it illogical. "Fault" is just as short as "bad".
>
> --
> Bertel, Denmark

But "my fault" and "my bad" mean distinctly different things.
"My fault" claims responsibility for a mistake in the event that
the identity of the person who caused the mistake might be in doubt.

For example, suppose you are the only person cooking and you
burn the food, you wouldn't normally say "it's my fault". That would
be an odd thing to say because it couldn't be anybody else's fault.
"My bad" fits here, I think.

However, if several people are cooking and the food is burned, one person
might own up saying "I'm the one who set the oven so that's my fault."

It's completely wrong to say that "my fault" can usually (or even often) be
substituted for "my bad".

Paul Epstein

Bertel Lund Hansen <gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> writes:
> occam wrote:
>
>> Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."
>>
>> Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
>> examples in the wild. It came up blank.
>
> Try an Ngram with "my bad,your bad,his bad,her bad"

My bad news for you is that your bad planning might cause him to show
his bad manners.

Phil
--
We are no longer hunters and nomads. No longer awed and frightened, as we have
gained some understanding of the world in which we live. As such, we can cast
aside childish remnants from the dawn of our civilization.
-- NotSanguine on SoylentNews, after Eugen Weber in /The Western Tradition/

msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) writes:
> Paul Epstein:
>>> ...it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember
>>> hearing people saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake"...
>
> Bertel Lund Hansen:
>> I find it illogical.
>
> I don't use it myself, but it's not illogical: it's just an
> adjective-to-noun conversion.

If the same conversion cannot be applied to all adjectives, then it's
arbitrary. I'd say an arbitrary applicability is a reasonable indicator
of illogic.

Phil
--
We are no longer hunters and nomads. No longer awed and frightened, as we have
gained some understanding of the world in which we live. As such, we can cast
aside childish remnants from the dawn of our civilization.
-- NotSanguine on SoylentNews, after Eugen Weber in /The Western Tradition/

On 2023-11-01 15:46, Paul Epstein wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 4:47:22 PM UTC, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>> Paul Epstein wrote:
>>
>>> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
>>> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
>>> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
>> I never liked it.
>>> It's a natural enough abbreviation.
>> I find it illogical. "Fault" is just as short as "bad".
>>
>> --
>> Bertel, Denmark
>
> But "my fault" and "my bad" mean distinctly different things.
> "My fault" claims responsibility for a mistake in the event that
> the identity of the person who caused the mistake might be in doubt.
>
> For example, suppose you are the only person cooking and you
> burn the food, you wouldn't normally say "it's my fault". That would
> be an odd thing to say because it couldn't be anybody else's fault.

Of course it could be someone else's fault. Someone else may have done
something that either pulled you away from the task or any of a number
of other things that caused the food to burn.

> "My bad" fits here, I think.
>
> However, if several people are cooking and the food is burned, one person
> might own up saying "I'm the one who set the oven so that's my fault."
>
> It's completely wrong to say that "my fault" can usually (or even often) be
> substituted for "my bad".

Disagree. In most, if not all, cases, the two phrases are exaxtly
equivalent.

> Paul Epstein

--
Just had a Hell's Angel Jehovah's Witness at the door.
He knocked on the door and then told ME to piss off.

Paul Epstein:
>>>> ...it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember
>>>> hearing people saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake"...

Bertel Lund Hansen:
>>> I find it illogical.

Mark Brader:
>> I don't use it myself, but it's not illogical: it's just an
>> adjective-to-noun conversion.
Phil Carmody:
> If the same conversion cannot be applied to all adjectives, then it's
> arbitrary.

"If". As someone said, "you can verb anything".

> I'd say an arbitrary applicability is a reasonable indicator
> of illogic.

Of the irregularity of natural language, I'd say.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Mark is, as usual, correct."
msb@vex.net --John Lawler

On 01/11/2023 18:48, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> occam wrote:
>
>> Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."
>>
>> Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
>> examples in the wild. It came up blank.
>
> Try an Ngram with "my bad,your bad,his bad,her bad"
>

Don't have to, it's a nonsense experiment. You will learn nothing.

On 2023-11-02 10:33:27 +0000, occam said:

> On 01/11/2023 18:48, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>> occam wrote:
>>
>>> Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."
>>>
>>> Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
>>> examples in the wild. It came up blank.
>>
>> Try an Ngram with "my bad,your bad,his bad,her bad"
>>
>
> Don't have to, it's a nonsense experiment. You will learn nothing.

True, but I tried anyway. It is meaningless, because it fails to
separate "my bad" as a complete utterance from "my bad" as part of
something else.

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 36 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 8:17:49 PM UTC+5:30, Paul Epstein wrote:
> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
> It's a natural enough abbreviation. However, one curious aspect of it is that
> it always seems to take the first-person possessive form.
> No one says "That's their bad" or "that's your bad" and no one says
> "It would be a bad to turn left here."
> So what's my question?
> Er... I don't have one.
> What's my point?
> I just made it.
>
AFAIK, 'my bad' is an admission AND an apology.
One doesn't apologize for another, so 'your bad' is not used.
'Our bad' could conceivably be used.

'I want you so bad' - The Beatles
- from the 'I Want You' track on the 'Abbey Road' album
Did that look kosher to the Brits?

It's US English, but another line 'She's driving mad' looks like UK English..

Dingbat wrote:

> AFAIK, 'my bad' is an admission AND an apology.
> One doesn't apologize for another, so 'your bad' is not used.
> 'Our bad' could conceivably be used.
>
> 'I want you so bad' - The Beatles
> - from the 'I Want You' track on the 'Abbey Road' album
> Did that look kosher to the Brits?
>
> It's US English, but another line 'She's driving mad' looks like UK English.

She's driving me mad

--
Bertel, Denmark

On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 6:03:54 PM UTC-4, Phil Carmody wrote:
> m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) writes:
> > Paul Epstein:

[did not write]
> >>> ...it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember
> >>> hearing people saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake"...
> >> I find it illogical.
> > I don't use it myself, but it's not illogical: it's just an
> > adjective-to-noun conversion.
>
> If the same conversion cannot be applied to all adjectives, then it's
> arbitrary. I'd say an arbitrary applicability is a reasonable indicator
> of illogic.

What does logic have to do with language?

Of course any word can be used as any "part of speech" in English.

That's one of the reasons that the Latin concept of "part of speech"
is not useful in describing English.

The technical term for doing it is "zero conversion" -- conversion
of a word from its usual function to an unusual one without any
mark of "derivation." (In "redness," the noun is _derived_ from the
adjective by adding -ness.) Shakespeare was fond of it: "But me
no buts" uses a "conjunction" as a "verb" and as a "noun" (with an
_inflectional_ ending).

On Thu, 2 Nov 2023 12:01:09 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<athel.cb@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 2023-11-02 10:33:27 +0000, occam said:
>
>> On 01/11/2023 18:48, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>>> occam wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."
>>>>
>>>> Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
>>>> examples in the wild. It came up blank.
>>>
>>> Try an Ngram with "my bad,your bad,his bad,her bad"
>>>
>>
>> Don't have to, it's a nonsense experiment. You will learn nothing.
>
>True, but I tried anyway. It is meaningless, because it fails to
>separate "my bad" as a complete utterance from "my bad" as part of
>something else.

Append _NOUN or _ADJ to the word to get separate graphs.
Here is a graph with 0 smoothing, _NOUN for my bad, your bad:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=your+bad_NOUN%2Cmy+bad_NOUN&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0

- This looks rather strange for the results before 1940. There
are multiple peaks (for both my and your) that exceed the
recent levels of use. The years of the peaks do not coincide.

There are 6 zeroes (after the decimal) before the percentages,
and I wonder if the early peaks are single Events that owe
to scanning errors. I haven't paid enough attention to the
number of zeroes before, so maybe someone else knows.

It isn't offering me any book-citations to look at.

--
Rich Ulrich

On 02/11/23 23:53, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> Dingbat wrote:
>
>> AFAIK, 'my bad' is an admission AND an apology.
>> One doesn't apologize for another, so 'your bad' is not used.
>> 'Our bad' could conceivably be used.
>>
>> 'I want you so bad' - The Beatles
>> - from the 'I Want You' track on the 'Abbey Road' album
>> Did that look kosher to the Brits?
>>
>> It's US English, but another line 'She's driving mad' looks like UK English.
>
> She's driving me mad

That surprised me so much that I had to go and listen to the original.
It turns out that what I had been hearing for years as "badly" is
actually "bad babe".

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

occam wrote on 11/1/2023 :
> On 01/11/2023 15:47, Paul Epstein wrote:
>> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
>> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
>> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
>> It's a natural enough abbreviation. However, one curious aspect of it is
>> that it always seems to take the first-person possessive form.
>> No one says "That's their bad" or "that's your bad" and no one says
>> "It would be a bad to turn left here."
>> So what's my question?
>> Er... I don't have one.
>> What's my point?
>> I just made it.
>>
>
> I see no reason why "my bad" should be confined to the first person.
>
> my bad, your bad, his bad.

Well, it was introduced as a half-apology. That motivates the first
person.

>
> Hypothetical use: "I don't why I should take the blame, that was his bad."
>
> Having said that, I did a quick scour of the web to find possible
> examples in the wild. It came up blank.

Contra Rich and Adam, I have a feeling I heard it before Buffy was a
thing, but certainly in a casual context which would fit the show.

Documentation? Evidence? 2 grey cells borrowed from another project.

/dps

--
You could try being nicer and politer
> instead, and see how that works out.
-- Katy Jennison

Remember when Bertel Lund Hansen bragged outrageously? That was
Wednesday:
> Paul Epstein wrote:
>
>> I can't remember when I first started hearing it (and I could google it) but
>> it may have been around 20 years ago that I first remember hearing people
>> saying "my bad" meaning "my mistake".
>
> I never liked it.

De gustibus.

>
>> It's a natural enough abbreviation.
>
> I find it illogical. "Fault" is just as short as "bad".

Not plosive enough.

/dps "You want logic? I laugh!"

--
Who, me? And what lacuna?

Peter Moylan wrote:

>>> 'I want you so bad' - The Beatles
>>> - from the 'I Want You' track on the 'Abbey Road' album
>>> Did that look kosher to the Brits?
>>>
>>> It's US English, but another line 'She's driving mad' looks like UK English.
>>
>> She's driving me mad
>
> That surprised me so much that I had to go and listen to the original.
> It turns out that what I had been hearing for years as "badly" is
> actually "bad babe".

Now I did the same, and it's:

It's driving me mad

--
Bertel, Denmark