It bugs me that I don’t know this…but not very much. :rolleyes:
It just seems that I see it or hear it often.
I heard it for the first time in southern Indiana and have never heard anyone in the Chicago area say it, ever.
I’ve always felt if one were going to deliberately say something ungrammatical, there ought to be some added value over the standard English expression, such as “my mistake.” I never did “get” “my bad.”
Welcome aboard, SoozieQ! This question has been asked here many times, but alas you can’t find it on an archive search since neither of the component words is at least 4 letters long (which is the same reason so many questions crop up asking about 420).
The best I can contribute is that it has been in American street slang since at least the 1980s; but it didn’t find mass appeal until it was included as a catch phrase in the movie “Clueless,” circa 1995. From there it was appropriated indiscriminately by all sorts of people – sort of the way “You go, girl” was.
My friends and I used it when I was in junior high, about 1976. We got it from the black guys in our class.
What you hear most depends on who you hang out with. Excuse me, with whom you hang out. No, no. With whom out, you hang.
Oh forget it.
Uneducated boy in the hood: My Bad
“Normal” person: My mistake (read: I’m sorry)
Pompous Ivy League graduate: Mea Culpa