"Mc-" prefix, 1963

[Mark Peters]

The lead dude on the show is nicknamed Dr. McDreamy--another is McSteamy. No insult there at all. Characters come up with words like "McDog" and "McLife" that are also non-McDonalds and non-derogatory, though I seem to remember another character threatening to "McVomit" about all this.

  648,000 Google hits for McDreamy at the moment, so that word's getting a workout.

  Mark

Joseph Salmons <jsalmons at WISC.EDU> wrote:
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Poster: Joseph Salmons
Subject: Re: "Mc-" prefix, 1963
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Actually, there's a whole string of humorous, derogatory McYZ names
out there. Mr. Verb (http://mr-verb.blogspot.com/) had a piece on
them this morning, shortly before the first message on this topic
came through. It's timely since McDonalds reportedly not long ago
renewed their fight to have 'mcjob' pulled from OED. (My personal
favorite is a radio show calling Tom Delay "Drunky McPukeshoes".) The
examples there are almost all political, so a step farther from the
fastfood chain. They go back a couple of years, at least, I think.

What does McDreamy mean and how is it used? The prefix has taken on a
pretty negative meaning in basically all of the examples I know of,
but that doesn't sound obviously negative.

Joe


On May 24, 2007, at 9:42 AM, Mark Peters wrote:

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> Poster: Mark Peters
> Subject: Re: "Mc-" prefix, 1963
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> The Grey's Anatomy McDreamy thing might fit the bill. That's
> spawned lots of variations on the show and elsewhere.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower wrote: ----------------------
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> Poster: Jesse Sheidlower
> Subject: Re: "Mc-" prefix, 1963
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> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 05:38:51AM -0700, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> By now many of us know about McJobs, McPapers, etc. But before
>> there were McJobs, there was _McLintock!_ (1963), with John Wayne
>> and Maureen O'Hara. The tagline in the trailer (or "preview" as we
>> used to call it more correctly) was:
>>
>> "'McLintock!' is McNificent!"
>>
>> How do I know? A friend of mine recalled it, and I checked IMDb
>> for confirmation.
>>
>> I doubt that "McNificent" has much to do with the application of
>> the McDonald's "Mc-," but, hey, that's diachronic lexicography!
>>
>
> In fact OED's sense 1 of _Mc-_ covers this sort of thing, with
> a first quotation of 1948 (from the Tamony Collection) and,
> similar to the Mc-...Mc- in the McLintock example, a 1958
> referring to "Marian McPartland's Mcmagic".
>
> (Any recent examples of this in clearly non-McDonald's contexts
> would be appreciated....)
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
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