Talk:my bad

My bag
A form of this expression - or the original expression - was around in the Black inner cities in the 50's and 60's when I was a child. However it was not "my bad" as in "I did a baddee," it was MY BAG!

I absolutely hate hearing every little White, Asian, and Latino kid and adult using and misusing this expression.

Perhaps a little more research is in order here...


 * I am not at all sure that the people from whom you hate hearing the expression even know about "my bag".
 * I also have heard "my bag" (or "my thing"), from 60's or 70's. I never heard it used as "My bad" is used today.
 * It was usually (always?) in the negative, as in "That's not my bag." or sometimes "That's not my thing." meaning "I'm not into that."
 * Ex:
 * Person #1
 * "I love baseball!"
 * Person #2
 * "Eh. That's not my bag. I like football."
 * 89.14.119.52 11:47, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Believe me, in the seventies when I grew up the term was "My Bag". I'm not speaking of the "I'm into to that - that kind of thing is my bag" variety. My bag was also used to express responsibility for a fault as in, "I stepped on your foot? My bag." We used it this way a lot. My family, my friends, kids and teenagers older and younger than me at the time. I came across a website years ago when discussing this topic with coworkers where the website identified Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless as the first person to incorrectly speak the phrase as my bad for the first time. This seems plausible in that Hollywood could make this kind of mistake seeing as how it is far removed from urban youth of the inner cities where the term was first being used. I remember hearing it used incorrectly in the 80's. But it stuck. That's the power of Hollywood.

Skyebeka (talk) 19:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC)Maurice

Nb:it was used by Jackie Gleason in the movie, Smokey and the Bandit 1977.

Origin of "my bad"
I agree with the previous editor. The phrase, "my bad", did not originate in U.S. colleges/universities as noted on http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm. The phrase was street slang used in Black neighborhoods, that made its way, as is often the case, into mainstream slang. Many phrases that eventually became mainstream slang originated in Black neighborhoods.


 * Maybe, but can you find any solid evidence? If not, it's just one guy's word against another's. Equinox ◑ 17:23, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Has anyone seen anything that suggests this as a possible origin? 89.14.119.52 11:47, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I always assumed that "my bad" was a shortened form of "Am I bad?" (said facetiously, as in "Am I bad, or what?"), with the "A" disappearing, and the "m I" slurring into "my".


 * You might want to check out Sonnet 112 by Shakespeare.


 * We used to say it in pick-up basketball games in late 70s or early 80s - if I made a mistake and was running back downcourt I would tell my teammate - my bad, as in my fault


 * In 1983, freshman Jeff Sullivan of West Hartford, CT was the first person ever to use the phrase "my bad". He was playing JV basketball for Loomis Chaffee HS in Windsor, CT when he threw a poor pass to a teammate, which went out of bounds, and he subsequently yelled "my bad!". So contrary to the lead note above, this phrase was spoken by a suburban kid in rural Connecticut first.


 * Proof? Equinox ◑ 15:15, 14 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I doubt whether this basketball player Sullivan from CT was the first one to use this term in 1983. Back in the mid-to-late 1980s "my bad" and "your bad" (meaning "my fault" and "your fault") was already of pretty common usage among 13-18 year-olds (high-school) students in New Zealand.


 * Isn't the origin of "my bad" from the latin phrase "mea culpa" meaning "my fault"?


 * It is not. Equinox ◑ 01:10, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

RFC discussion: December 2007–December 2010
This doesn't read like it's in Wiktionary style. I'm not certain if the final section needs to be here at all. Thryduulf 23:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a nice simple entry at bad. Noun sense: fault, mistake. Maybe the usage note at my bad should suggest that "bad" could be "your bad", "her bad", etc. It is, of course, very difficult to find the specific sense we are talking about because most collocations of a possessive pronoun with "bad" are not in this sense, even in fiction. DCDuring 00:26, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * General-purpose noun-ish "bad" in this sense probably meets CFI — a minute or two of creative Google Book Searching is enough to pull up and  — but "my bad" is definitely its own thing, at least for me. Consider "my brave" and "my proud"; these are already a stretch, but I don't think I'd even understand "your brave" if I came across it in context. —Ruakh TALK 06:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

My Bad is the way it is used to try and change it to fit your context would take it out of it context...although  it would seem that Wiktionary could stand some improving


 * The entry is clean. If it should be deleted, that is a separate issue. — Beobach 05:07, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Alternative form as "my b"
I have seen in texting, and have found on Twitter, the form used. It seems like a set phrase to my knowledge as I can't find phrases like, , , etc. on Twitter that one might expect if the alternative form was a freely combinable form. &mdash;The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 21:57, 10 November 2022 (UTC)