Word.ws English Dictionary

my bad

my bad interjection: my fault; mea culpa.

Interjection

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) My fault; mea culpa.
    • Yes, I realise the car isn't supposed to be parked in the heirloom flowerbed. My bad.
    • DMV Tester: Watch out for the bike rid…!
      Cher: [swerving car to avoid cyclist] Oops! My bad!1995, Amy Heckerling, Clueless
  2. (colloquial, idiomatic) sorry

Synonyms of my bad

Forms of my bad

alternative clippingmy b
alternative initialismmb
alternative initialismMB

Origin of my bad

Pick-up basketball slang popularized (but not first coined) by Manute Bol, a basketball player of Sudanese origin playing with the Golden State Warriors, and subsequently adopted by teammates. Compare semantics with Russian оплошность (oplošnostʹ, “mistake, bad”), from о- (o-) + плох (plox, “bad”).

Questions about my bad

What does my bad mean?
My bad means my fault; mea culpa.
What part of speech is my bad?
My bad is an interjection.

Words near my bad in the dictionary

  1. my ass
  2. my aunt
  3. my aunt Fanny
  4. my b
  5. my back teeth are floating
  6. my bad
  7. my beloved
  8. my blood type is ...
  9. my bloody oath
  10. my body is ready
  11. my body, my choice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: my bad (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-my bad.ogg.

Cite this entry: “my bad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/my_bad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.