McMansion

/ məkˈmænʃən /

noun

1. informal,  a large modern house considered to look mass-produced, lacking in distinguishing characteristics, and at variance with established local architecture

Word History and Origins

Origin of McMansion¹

C20: a corruption of McDonald's , a major American fast-food enterprise noted for the ubiquity of its restaurants

Example Sentences

After all, the entry point to this parallel universe is a tony study inside a well-appointed McMansion.

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McCann is, by no exaggeration, the best reality television find since Tiffany “New York” Pollard strolled into the McMansion they rented for “Flavor of Love” Season 1.

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The clean, gleaming surfaces leave an impression of what Elsinore castle might be like as a coastal McMansion on one of the “Real Housewives” series.

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This isn’t to say that two Housewives fighting about who stole a McMansion is directly comparable to Trump having a death grip on the White House, only that, despite all the cynics who claim it’s a meritless void, “Housewives” remains a valuable lens for analyzing our culture.

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I’m a frequent reader of McMansion Hell, the critic Kate Wagner’s caustic architecture blog, and while GWHs are McMansion-sized, they don’t sport a lot of the fripperies—the cornices, the colonnades—that the ’90s monstrosities on Wagner’s site do.

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