Quote:
Originally Posted by timun
English is weird, true. But it's categorically "by accident" and "on purpose". You wouldn't say "on design", "on chance", "on far", "on heart", "on mistake", "on nature", "on virtue of", etc.
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For sure, just like you wouldn't say "by purpose", "by principle" or "by average". None of those are things you are "on top of" but we use the preposition "on" for all of those phrases.
Anyway, I wasn't saying you were wrong, quite the opposite, I just think the whole thing is weird. You might say the illogical word choice rules of our language GMG.