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Re: My bad

Posted by Smokey Stover on April 10, 2009 at 04:48

In Reply to: Re: My bad posted by ESC on April 05, 2009 at 01:06:

: : Did Thomas Jefferson use the expression "my bad" in his campaign against Charles Pinkney?

: All I know is here:

: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-bad.html Sorry.

ESC's link is to the Dictionary of Phrases, redacted by Gary. It's an excellent article, with which I dare have but a single small quarrel. "Although a street term, it is virtually synonymous with the earlier Latin phrase, 'mea culpa'" This is misleading, I thik. "My fault" is a modifier + noun, grammatically what we expect. "My bad" is an adjective + adjective, with no noun to modify, ungrammatical and unexpected. It seems unlikely that Jefferson said this unless he wss interrupted before he could speak or write the noun. But I do not know what Jefferson might have said in his voluminous writings.

My first encounter with "My bad" was not in "Clueless," but in that compendium of nonsense grammar and current slang, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV series, 1997-2004, not the movie).
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