McMansion

[David Colburn]

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael Quinion <TheEditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG>
> Organization: World Wide Words
> Subject:      Re: McMansion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
>
> 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."