on accident

[Herb Stahlke]

The replies to my original query suggest that "on accident" has a generational distribution.  As one (Minnesota?) writer pointed out, the phrase had a more specific regional meaning in the upper Midwest of "accidently on purpose," which may well have been the intended meaning in the AP article on the Simpsons that started all of this.  Natalie's and PAT's messages, from Mississippi and Alabama, would fit in with my earlier assumption that the distribution is also regional, at least to the extent of excluding the SE.  I wouldn't be surprised, however, to find people under 30 in the urban SE using the expression.

Herb Stahlke