I’ve made a huge mistake. I thought someone would have mentioned Arrested Development by now.
If you’re wrong, admit it, even days later, especially if you made a point of disagreeing with somebody.
Don’t apologize, though, unless you offended somebody in the process.
Admitting your mistakes will gain you respect in the long run.
For me it’s a mistake if you didn’t MEAN to do what you did.
Being wrong is where you believe in what you did, but later recognize that it wasn’t right.
I tell this story at least once a year, and I am always quickly shut down for it, but here goes.
When I was a young kid coming up in the urban ghettos of upstate NY, in the early 80s, we used to say, “my bag” when we made a mistake. In the 70s, something wasn’t ‘your bag’ if it was something you weren’t into. By the time the 80s came along, that had morphed into, “my bag” when you had done something wrong.
By the time that damn “Clueless” movie came along, no one in the hood was really using the phrase at all, but now everyone on tv and everywhere else was using ‘my bad’ all the time. I hate it. No other slang really uses such…baby talk to make its point. Just ugh.
Sorry for the hijack, but to contribute to the OP;
I say, “I was wrong”. You know why? Because that’s what folks really want to hear and it really doesn’t matter whose fault anything is. What matters is if anything is learned. If someone proves me wrong about something, (or if I just do something wrong), then I can learn from that. Great. If I have a difference of opinion with someone and they think I am wrong, but I am really right, then they are cheating themselves out of an opportunity to learn something. No skin off of my nose. I will gladly say, “I was wrong” since it is no skin off of my nose.
If you are in a crowd, and you are arguing about something, go ahead and make all of your points. If you are right, at the end of that debate, you can say, “Ok. I was wrong. No hard feelings” or whatever, and any witness to that debate that took any of your points is still going to benefit from that, regardless if you said you are wrong or not. I do it all the time. I say exactly what is on my mind, and even if I think I am right, I will just go ahead and apologize and say I’m wrong if it will salve someone’s feelings or ego or whatever.
I am/was wrong - I made an error with my facts - I was wrong, the recipe calls for cream, not milk.
I made a mistake - I did something incorrectly - I made a mistake, I bought milk instead of cream.
These are not hard and fast divisions, but that’s the general breakdown for me.