This slang term originated in about 1970. At that time, i.e. pre the widespread use of the Internet, slang terms often circulated at street level for many years before being adopted by anyone who felt inclined to write them down. That's clearly not the case any longer of course and any word or phrase that is widely known is dateable quite precisely via website logs.
The first citation in print is C. Wielgus and A. Wolff's, 'Back-in-your-face Guide to Pick-up Basketball', 1986:
"My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after making a bad pass or missing an opponent."
Shakespeare used the term with something like the current meaning, in his Sonnet 112:
Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
That's clearly just coincidence, and it's hardly surprising that such a fragmentary phrase would appear in a large body of work like Shakespeare's. It's also a world away from pick-up basketball, which is an informal street sport where players frequently call out to each other (trash talking), and is a well-known source of street lang.
What irritates me is people who can't see language as an organism that lives and grows and transforms. They can't see the beauty in words and the way they can be forged into new sayings with fresh nuances and are bound by the construct of grammar, which by their own admittance they don't understand.
I'm 90% sure it was popularised first in modern times in rap slang. I only hear it "back in the day" when hip hop started to "get busy" back in the late 80s / early 90's.
I may be wrong wrong but that's when I first came across it.
And while I don't want to "Dis" some people I like a lot on this Forum, but I really don't like 'nom nom nom' either. My bad. :-)
Wow! Hadn't realized it's been around for sooooooo many years. Thought I was pretty up on slanguage but had to ask another EFer what it meant only just a few days ago. To say he was mightily surprized is putting it mildly.
Don't we have a thread on words we don't like already?
I think I don't have a problem with my bad, I like concise things, why get into "I am sorry, it was my fault" when it actually means the same, is just shorter.
When we are at it, I am very irritated by chou chou and mon cherie, mon coeur...Ugh. In English, I can't live with loins, groin, batch and delicious. My guitarist had a serious problem with nostrils and noodle. I think once we made a song including all these nasty words
__________________ "L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi
“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein
my bad has been around a long time, i remember hearing it for a while...personally i like the evolution of language and hearing new words and changing slang and all that, grammar has never really kept up with the times and changes in language, as i think it was said even shakespeare was a rule breaker.
i also cant stand the words groin and loins, add to that crotch, giblet and a few others- love delicious though, deeeelicious is a great adjective esp in nyc gay slang...very florid.
speaking of which i just heard some swiss teen say what up g to another. bizarre...sometimes hearing these things around here make me feel im in another parallel universe to where im from...as was mentioned in a different thread a while back though, bye bye said to me from older people strikes me as really bizarre and very funny too.
__________________
'there isn't enough of anything as long as we live.
but at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails'
Oh how funny, heard a French person saying "my bad" and I thought.... mmmm.... it's not polite to correct him.
Now I realize he was more in tune with linguistic changes than I
Certain words make me cringe and I'll write or speak a paragraph instead of using them.
Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
“my bad”
First use: Shakespearean sonnet
Popularization: the movie Clueless
Use: throughout US
Saying some new slang word or expression “doesn’t make sense” doesn’t make sense. It does make sense otherwise people wouldn’t be using the term. You also can’t say that you don’t understand it because you clearly do. So, you don’t like some new slang term. Fair enough, then don’t use it. Personally, I don't like it either.
"Live above Sunset" = live above Sunset Blvd. in LA.
button in these parts — even if they didn't "count."
Linear Mode
