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The real McCoy

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dcowboys3109 (talk | contribs) at 20:02, 6 January 2010 (see discussion, source listed as theorizing elijah mccoy as the inspiration for the term in fact is an expose on why elijah mccoy was NOT the namesake of the term). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other uses, see The Real McCoy (disambiguation).
Look up real McCoy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

"The real McCoy" is an idiom used throughout much of the English-speaking world to mean "the real thing" or "the genuine article" e.g., "he's the real McCoy". It is a corruption of the Scots "The real MacKay", first recorded in 1856 as: "A drappie o’ the real MacKay," (A drop of the real MacKay), and this is widely accepted as the origin.[1][2][3]

How it came to be "McCoy" is unclear – it is first recorded in this form in the US in 1908[4] – and the phrase is the subject of numerous fanciful folk etymologies.

The real MacKay

"The Real MacKay," a Scots phrase that appeared first in 1856 as "A drappie o’ [drop of] the real MacKay," by the Scottish National Dictionary; the same work says that the phrase was later adopted as a slogan to promote G Mackay & Co Ltd's whisky. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes Robert Louis Stevenson from 1883 in a letter saying "He's the real Mackay."

In Scotland the reference is always the real MacKay (with the ay pronounced as i). In Ireland this changed to McCoy. The Irish MacKays, McCoys and Magees originated in Scotland and the Isle of Man, crossing to Ulster as Gallowglasses in the 13th century. "The Real McCoy"


Rum-runner William S. McCoy Captain William S. McCoy was a boat builder and excursion boat captain in the Daytona Beach, Florida, area from 1900 to 1920. He was also a non-drinker. With the start of Prohibition Captain McCoy began to bring rum from Bimini and the Bahamas into south Florida through Government Cut. The Coast Guard soon caught up with him, so he began to bring the illegal goods to just outside of the U.S. territorial waters and let smaller boats and other captains such as Habana Joe take the risk of bringing it into shore. The rum-running business was very good, and McCoy soon bought a Gloucester knockabout schooner named Arethusa at auction and renamed her Tomoka. He installed a larger auxiliary, mounted a concealed machine gun on her deck and refitted the fish pens below to accommodate as much contraband as she could hold. She became one of the most famous of the rum-runners, along with his two other ships hauling mostly Irish and Canadian whiskey, as well as other fine liquors and wines, to ports from Maine to Florida. In the days of rum running, it was common for captains to add water to the bottles to stretch their profits, or to re-label it as better goods. Any cheap sparkling wine became French champagne or Italian Spumante; unbranded liquor became top-of-the-line name brands. McCoy became famous for never watering his booze, and selling only top brands.

Origins

Michael Quinion of the World Wide Words website summarises the half dozen or so theories on the origin of this phrase:

  • MacKay, as above
  • A boxer, Norman Selby, known as Kid McCoy, American welterweight champion from 1898–1900. There are apocryphal tales to the effect that he had many imitators and had to adopt the term to distinguish himself. Others say that during one match, he pretended to be dazed and weak after being hit in order to trick his opponent into attacking him. But then he came back and surprised his opponent with an attack, and the announcer said "which is the real McCoy?"
  • The McCoy family of an infamous family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys on the West Virginia-Kentucky border in the United States in the late nineteenth century.
  • A famous American cattle baron by the name of Joseph McCoy is said to have promised his investors to bring 200,000 head of cattle from Texas to Chicago in 10 years. In the early 1870's he brought 10 times as many in just 4 years (theory popularised by Alistair Cooke).
  • During the U.S. Prohibition era, it was common for rum-runner captains to add water to bottles to stretch their profits, or to re-label it as better goods. One American rum-runner captain and boat builder, William S. McCoy, became famous for never watering his booze, and selling only real top-quality products. Because of this, some accounts place McCoy as the source of the term "the Real McCoy."
  • A reference to pure heroin imported from Macau.

Quinion notes that many authorities favor the Kid McCoy story, but he personally finds the MacKay story more convincing because of the concrete evidence which generally pre-dates the references supporting other stories, and the MacKay source is widely accepted among lexicographers.

References

  1. ^ Scottish National Dictionary
  2. ^ 2007 Oxford English Dictionary
  3. ^ Susie Dent of the Oxford University Press, on February 8, 2008 broadcast of Countdown.
  4. ^ "I took a good-size snort out of that big bottle [of furniture polish] in the middle....Have you none of the clear McCoy handy around the house?", The Mavens’ Word of the Day: real McCoy cites Dictionary of Americanisms, which gives the citation for this quote as Davenport, Butte Beneath X-Ray.
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