On Accident vs. By Accident

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kyle in Salt Lake City.

Hi, Kyle. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do you for?

Well, I had a question.

My daughter started using this phrase that I wasn’t sure about.

Whenever she does something by mistake, she said it was done on accident.

And I’d always heard the phrase as by accident, and so I was going to correct her, but then I realized that when we do something intentionally, we say we did it on purpose.

And that got me thinking about, you know, whether we could use on purpose, by purpose, on accident, by accident.

And then I also got thinking about why we even use the words on and by to begin with.

Wow, you’ve been busy.

Yeah.

And then you had to take a nap in the lie down.

Yeah, exactly.

Cold compress on your forehead.

Hey, Kyle, how old is your daughter?

She’s 13.

-huh.

This is great, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, yeah, it totally fits the pattern, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle, this may seem like a trivial question, but it’s actually something that gets linguists very excited.

Here’s the deal, Kyle.

This is a great example of language changing between generations right under our noses.

I just love this.

The reason we’re so excited about this is that there has been some research done recently about this.

There’s a linguist at Indiana State University, Leslie Barrett, who noticed that her daughter and her daughter’s cousin did the same thing that you’re describing.

They said that happened on accident.

And she started looking around and she started researching this.

And what she found doing surveys all around the country was that on accident is more prevalent if you’re 10 years old or younger, that either on or by is common between the ages of 10 and 35.

And if you’re over 35, you almost always say by accident.

So what is going on?

Yeah, really.

Kyle, this is called age grading.

And age grading is when something actually can be clearly defined according to a peer group, almost always marked by age, sometimes marked by other things, but by age is the best indicator.

And the transformation that’s happening here is so significant that we get the emails from people who are kind of like Leslie Barrett before she did her research.

They’re saying, wait a second, I’ve got like six or seven emails here that I can find right away and probably more that we’ve received over the years about this.

They’re like, wait a second, I don’t say this.

My husband doesn’t say this.

Nobody I know except my children say this.

What’s happening here?

Are they just wrong?

And this is kind of where you’re headed, right?

Right, right.

Now, do your daughter’s peers say that, her classmates or friends?

I haven’t heard her friends say that, but I have an 8-year-old son who I noticed.

After I noticed my daughter saying it, I noticed my son saying it.

-huh.

So, Kyle, I guess the bottom line is that if you’re over 35, you’re almost certainly going to use by accident.

And if you’re younger than 35, you’re going to use one or the other on accident or by accident.

And if you’re really young, you’ll almost certainly use on accident.

And the weird thing is that we don’t know why.

That is interesting. Great.

And, Kyle, you see why this gets us so excited.

Yes. Yes, I do. And, I mean, that’s fascinating.

Well, thank you for calling. I hope we helped.

Well, thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks, Kyle. Bye-bye.

Goodbye.

Are your kids talking funny? Let us know about it.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.