Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Why do we say "The real McCoy"?

Well-Known Expressions

The real McCoy

Meaning:

It's the real thing - not an imitation

Background:

There are many theories as to the origin of the expression, 'The Real McCoy'.

One contender is that it refers to the Canadian inventor Elijah McCoy, born in or around 1844, who invented many things including an automatic lubricator for steam engines. Other automatic lubricators followed but were considered inferior thus engineers were said to ask for "the real McCoy".

Another is that it originates in Edinburgh, Scotland where, by 1870, the "the Real Mackay" was the established advertising slogan of the G. Mackay and Co. whisky distillery company whose whiskey was exported to both the USA and Canada. The Oxford English Dictionary records a letter written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1883 referring to somebody as 'the real Mackay'.

Another is that it originates with legendary boxer Kid McCoy (1873-1940) who was so popular that many fighters assumed the same name. To reassure their readers that they were reporting on the genuine article, an 1899 edition of the San Francisco Examiner stated that the "real McCoy" had won his latest match.

Yet another theory comes from a member of the McCoy family of Long Island, NY, who says that his great grandfather ran a funeral parlor in Lower Manhattan during the prohibition era. Few corpses passed through the door because the establishment was primarily a front for a whiskey distillery which supplied the local speakeasies, who would ask for Real McCoy Whiskey.

While it appears that the oldest known variation of this expression originates in Scotland, it also seems quite conceivable that it was moderated into its modern-day usage by one or more of the other 'originators' - perhaps as a pun on the original.

More expressions and their source

Challenge yourself with BookBrowse Wordplays

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

I write to add to the beauty that now belongs to me

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.