"real McCoy" meaning in English

See real McCoy in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-real McCoy.ogg Forms: the real McCoy [canonical]
Etymology: Corruption of Scots the real MacKay, this latter attested in 1856 as “A drappie o’ the real MacKay” (A drop of the real MacKay). How “MacKay” became “McCoy” is unclear; first attested in the form “McCoy” in the US in 1908. The term is the subject of many folk etymologies, discussed at the Wikipedia entry. Etymology templates: {{der|en|sco|real MacKay|the real MacKay}} Scots the real MacKay Head templates: {{head|en|noun|head=the real McCoy}} the real McCoy
  1. (idiomatic) The genuine thing, neither a substitute nor an imitation. Wikipedia link: Scottish National Dictionary Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: real deal, real McKoy, real Macoy Translations (Translations): autentyk [masculine] (Polish)

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for real McCoy meaning in English (1.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.