Real McCoy (1914, 1915, 1916)

[Dave Wilton]

> On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
> >    The HDAS has 13 Jan. 1915 T. A. Dorgan for the first
> >"real McCoy."  The next citation is 1917.  I looked for
> >other cites.
> >
> >    14 December 1914, NEVADA STATE JOURNAL (Reno, Nevada),
> > pg. 6, col. 1:
> > _THE REAL McCOY COMES_
> > _TO RENO THOS MORNING_
> >    "Kid" McCoy, the one and original real McCoy, is on his
> > way to Reno and
>
> I think this is an extremely important discovery.  For one
> thing, it does push back slightly the first use of the term
> "real McCoy."  More significantly, it gives a new life to the
> Kid McCoy theory about the adaptation of the term.

Barry's find is certainly an interesting one, but not all that conclusive.
Note the use of the phrasing "one and original." This strongly indicates
that the term "real McCoy" was in common use in 1914 and referred to a
variety of things, not just the boxer. One wouldn't use the term "original"
unless there were others. The other two citation in Barry's post bear this
out.

While this citation does lend some support to the hypothesis that the phrase
comes from the boxer, it is hardly definitive. The weight of the evidence
would still seem to be against the boxer being the origin. The citation does
prove that the phrase was used during Kid McCoy's career and the boxer and
his promoters did call him "the real McCoy," but it is still probable that
they appropriated, rather than invented, the phrase.