McMansion

David Colburn colburn at PEOPLEPC.COM
Wed Dec 10 16:34:34 UTC 2003


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael Quinion <TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG>
> Organization: World Wide Words
> Subject:      Re: McMansion
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> This came up when I was writing about "McJob" recently. In Britain it
> is usually a derogatory term for a modest new home, the architectural
> equivalent of the hamburger, but in the US it's a pretentious, over-
> sized mini-mansion (think pillared portico and gold bathroom taps)
> that has been squeezed on to an urban building lot.
>
And it's been around long enough to make it into the Shorter OED, defined as
"a modern house built on a large and imposing scale, but regarded as
ostentatious and lacking in architectural integrity."



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