"Mc-" prefix, 1963

[Jesse Sheidlower]

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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