Penmanship [Was: Illinois bans male pronoun]

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Rowan McMullin:
> Is the related "my bad" more recent or older?

Larry Horn:
> Older than '99 for sure.  For example, Bob Greene wrote a column in
> the 11/3/97 Chicago Tribune and syndicated elsewhere in which he
> cites various linguists, including yours truly, weighing in on the
> origin and significance of "my bad".

John Baker:
> I remember using "my bad" in 1981, and I think it was around a few years
> earlier.

OED's got it from 1986:

1986 C. WIELGUS & A. WOLFF Back-in-your-face Guide to Pick-up
Basketball 226 My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after
making a bad pass or missing an opponent.
1986 UNC-CH Campus Slang (Univ. North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Mar., My
bad, expression to admit one has made a mistake: A: 'You did the wrong
homework set for today.' B: 'Oh, my bad.'

But others remember hearing it in pick-up basketball games as early as
the mid-'70s:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001927.html


--Ben Zimmer

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