McMansion

Uncommon card · No. 160444

A McMansion is a large house in a suburban community, typically marketed to the upper middle class in developed countries. Architectural historian Virginia Savage McAlester, who gave a first description of the common features which define this building style, coined the more neutral term Millennium Mansion. An example of a McWord, "McMansion" associates the generic quality of these luxury houses with that of mass-produced fast food by evoking McDonald's, an American restaurant chain. The neologism "McMansion" seems to have been coined sometime in the early 1980s. It appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1990 and The New York Times in 1998. Other terms used to describe "McMansions" include "Persian palace", "Garage Mahal", "starter castle", and "Hummer house". Marketing parlance often uses the term "tract mansions" or executive homes.

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