on accident

[pskuhlman at JUNO.COM]

        I  grew up in the rural not yet suburban area northwest of Chicago in
the fifties and sixties.  I did not say "on accident", but heard many of
my friends do so as the equivalent of "by accident", not to mean
"accidently on purpose".  "On accident" was commonplace, but tended to be
used by kids with a slightly different familial linguistic history than
mine (parents from northern Indiana and central Illinois), i.e. people
whose families had more urban Midwestern roots.  I associate "on
accident" with another familiar Chicago area expression I heard a lot,
but didn't use,  "Do you want to come with?"  Same kids used both unless
I'm remembering wrong.  Is it possible "on accident" has a Germanic
connection?

Patricia Kuhlman
pskuhlman at juno.com
Brooklyn, New York


On Tue, 18 Jan 2000 08:39:44 -0500 Herb Stahlke <HSTAHLKE at GW.BSU.EDU>
writes:
> 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