[Ads-l] "my bad" redux

[Ben Zimmer]

On the Woot.com blog, Ken Jennings has a post in his "debunker" series,
"Did Manute Bol Coin the Phrase 'My Bad'?":

https://www.woot.com/blog/post/the-debunker-did-manute-bol-coin-the-phrase-my-bad

This appears to rely on research I rounded up in a Word Routes column in
2010, after Manute Bol died:

https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-manute-bol-theory-of-my-bad/

In that column, I noted that the earliest known citation was one that
Garson found from Nov. 1985 and posted to ADS-L. (It was subsequently
included in the OED3 entry for "bad.")

----
1985 Gainesville Sun 14 Nov. 3E 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/newspapers?id=ya4RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vekDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3244,4369872
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2010-April/098781.html
----

That example was from Bobby Tyler, a sportswriter in Gainesville, Florida.
Here it is earlier in 1985 from Dan Rooney, a local sports columnist in
Muncie, Indiana.

----
The Star Press (Muncie, Indiana), Apr. 14, 1985, p. C7, col. 3
I know. I picked Fuzzy Zoeller to win the Masters and he didn't even make
the cut. My bad.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/24771896/my_bad/
----

--bgz

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org