bad

[Alexey I. Fuchs]

I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the saying is semantically
similar (or, rather, similar in structure) to "my best" as in "I tried to
do my best." Provided such a phrase, one can do "his good," or,
conversely, "his bad." The "basketball court" seems to clarify that.
Besides, there are phrases in which the noun is dropped due to a huge
number of possibilities, and only the adjective stays as could be the case
of the two aforementioned sayings. When one says "It was my bad..." and
tries to continue with a noun, he might give up because the meaning is
already clear. When the noun drops, it is easy to pass the accentuation to
"my," to produce "Nobody's fault but mine."

Regards,
                                                Alexey



On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, David Bergdahl wrote:

> My limited experience with the expression is with a teenager still living at
> home; my understanding is that "my bad" is what one says on the basketball
> court for an error, i.e. "I'm sorry, I screwed up."
>
> "Bethany K. Dumas" wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2 Sep 1999 P2052 at AOL.COM wrote:
> >
> > >It used to be "That's my bag," which was later shortened to, "My bag."  I
> > >think that "my bad" is folk pronunciation of this slang expression.
> >
> > Interesting. Then why is it used only when the speaker is referring to
> > something at which s/he is bad or which is generally considered wrong,
> > illegal, etc. (My experience with the word.)
> >
> > Bethany
>
> --
> ___________________________________________________________
> David Bergdahl            Ohio University /Athens       tel: (740) 593-2783
> home page: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl    fax: (740) 593-2818
>