on accident

[Mark A Mandel]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Peter Richardson wrote:

#I'll confess that I've never heard "on accident" before--that is, until
#this morning, when I asked about 20 students after seeing the ADS posting.
#They all agreed that one would say, "I did it on accident," but that it
#would have to be "It happened by accident." Presumably the difference
#involves a personal subject vs. an impersonal one, although I didn't
#question the reason for the difference. They did say that "I did it by
#accident" would sound odd.

IMHO this supports the hypothesis of analogy with "on purpose", which
requires an agent -- *"It happened on purpose" is wrong for all normal
interpretations of the universe.

-- Mark A. Mandel