"my bad" revisited one more time

[Garson O'Toole]

Great article! You may wish to add the following slightly earlier
citation from a sports writer. I sent it to the OED via email and was
told that the antedating would be added to the revision file. So it
will probably appear in time.

1985 November 14, Gainesville Sun, Welcome to the wonderful, wacky
world of SEC football by Bobby Tyler, Page 3E, Gainesville, Florida.
(Google News Archive)

Yes, the Vols still must host Vandy the following weekend, but c'mon,
Vandy? Oops, my bad, I forgot for a moment what the Commodore did to
Georgia. Silly me.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22bad+I+forgot+for%22&

Garson

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "my bad" revisited one more time
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I try to set the record straight in my latest Word Routes column...
>
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2327/
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 10:25 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> At 9:57 PM -0400 6/21/10, Alice Faber wrote:
>>>On 6/21/10 9:39 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>Manute Bol, the legendary (but real) 7'7" basketball player who
>>>>hailed from the Sudan and remains the only player in NBA history to
>>>>average more blocks than points per game, died a couple of days ago
>>>>at age 47 of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a painful skin disease from
>>>>which he long suffered. He is known for his humanitarian work in
>>>>Sudan with the "lost boys" and other refugees from the genocidal war
>>>>there, as well as for his unusual body shape, set off in this famous
>>>>photo by that of his sometime teammate, the 5'4" Muggsy Bogues:
>>>>http://trueball.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/manute-bol-n-muggsy-bogues.jpg
>>>>
>>>>But what I *didn't* know (possibly because it isn't true) is that,
>>>>according to sports reporter Bill Plaschke on today's "Around the
>>>>Horn" (ESPN, 5:00-5:30), Manute is also known for something else:
>>>>
>>>>"You might not know this. He coined the phrase 'my bad', back in the
>>>>late 1980's. Language experts have pretty much proven this. When
>>>>they said 'My fault' he would say 'My bad' because he didn't
>>>>understand the language."
>>>>
>>>>Plaschke apparently didn't invent this story: cf.
>>>>http://beforeitsnews.com/news/83/134/Manute_Bols_legacy:_did_he_invent_the_phrase_my_bad.html,
>>>>
>>>>which cites, inter alia, this post by Geoff Pullum on Language Log:
>>>>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002693.html
>>>>
>>>>Am I wrong to be skeptical?
>>>>
>>>
>>>Funny, one of the blog postings on this that I saw yesterday (citing one
>>>Prof. Horn's comments to Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune) elicited
>>>some comments asserting that the phrase was playground usage in
>>>Washington in the 60s.
>>>
>>><http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2010/06/manute_bol_and_my_bad.html>
>>
>> Interesting.  For a minute I thought *I* was quoted as tracking it
>> back to the 60s, but I see it's just fdlaidback69aolcom who does so.
>> So it's commenter fdlaidback69 vs. commentator Plaschke.  As long as
>> we can agree that "language experts" haven't "pretty much proven" the
>> connection...
>>
>
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