is it just me or has the phrase "on accident" popped up a lot in the last few years? I never remember seeing this before a few years ago and now I see it quite a lot and I always bump off it as sounding wrong to my ear.
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huh. It's not me: it's an age thing. https://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/01_4/barratt16.htm suggests that "on accident" is what young people say and the creaky aged such as myself say "by accident". Nobody seems to know why. Still, this explains why it sounds weird to me and why it feels like I hear it more than I did, so at least I wasn't making it up!
