Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Noun Phrase 187. The noun phrase today is the
real McCoy. Yeah. A lot of times students ask you know, where did this come from?
Where did the real McCoy ... there must be some story behind it. Well. Actually
there's several stories behind it. So let's, let's look at this. Let's look at
the the note here first. If someone says that a person or thing is the real McCoy,
it means he or she is genuine or the authentic thing or definitely not a copy.
So, so the definition is very clear. It means something that is real. Something
that's authentic. Something that is not a fake or a copy. All right. Let's continue.
There are several interesting possible origins. The first one is that the real
McCoy may be a corruption of an old Scottish phrase the real McKay. So when
they say corruption is like you know, people just started pronouncing it
incorrectly. So maybe originally it was the real McKay and then it just kind of
changed or morphed into the real McCoy. Okay. All right. The real McKay.
Which actually referred to a brand of whiskey. Yeah. So I think there was a lot
of whiskeys or brands of whiskeys at that time and this guy wanted everybody
to know that he's was the genuine real McCay. You know, that his quality was
better than the other whiskies. Let's continue. It was first recorded in a poem
"Delis Hallow'en. " Here is the quote. "A drapple of the real McCoy. Now drapple is
kind of an old term that we had to... it meant like a drop of something. The famous
author, Robert Louis Stevenson also used this phrase in his writing and he
had this quote "You know, here's the real McCoy. So it's been around since at least
that time. So several hundred years ago. All right. Let's continue. A second possibility
relates to an inventor named Elijah McCoy from Canada in the mid-1800;s.
He had many inventions including the ironing board. Well if you
ever wanted to know who invented the ironing board, I guess it was him . Lawn
sprinklers. So I guess it makes sense. It was around that time.
Lubricators for stream, steam engines etc. Okay.
Yeah. There were many who tried to you know, copy his inventions, but their
devices were of poorer quality. So people started to say they wanted the real
McCoy. They wanted the , the devices that were invented by Elijah McCoy
because those were the ones that worked better or worked well. Not these. Not
these other ones who were trying to copy his inventions basically. Okay. Let's
continue. A third possible origin relates to an American boxer named Norman Selby
who boxed under the name Kidd McCoy . So Kidd McCoy was you know, just his boxing
name. He was the welterweight champion from
1898 to 1900. So for about three years there. It is said in small towns. Yeah.
Many imitator boxers used to use his name for matches and he eventually billed
himself as the real McCoy. So remember this 1898. So this is before radio. This is
before TV. You know somebody could just say that you know they were that person
and you might not know. Today of course probably his picture would have been
everywhere and they wouldn't be able to get away with that. But at that time. You
probably could. So somebody else just use his name. Pretended he was that boxer to
attract more people and then so eventually he had to bill you know, under
his name which means to advertise that he was the real McCoy. Not these
imitating McCoys. Okay. Good. And, and we just have you know, several examples
here to cover this. Here's the first example.
I once panned for gold and found a small gold rock. When I had it checked out I
found out it was not the real McCoy. It was just fool's gold. Yeah. They say that
there's sometimes people find a rock that looks like it could be real
gold , but it's actually not be a genuine or authentic gold. It's just another rock.
That's more or less pretty worthless. All right. Number two here. Jenny thought
the big rock her fiance gave her was the real McCoy.
Meaning of course a real diamond, but she found out it was just a cubic zirconia.
So he just got her an artificial one. A cubic zirconia. Of course, is you know, one
that's like made in a laboratory not a genuine diamond. Okay. And number three
here. I don't want any imitations. If it is not the real McCoy, I don't want it. So
people could say this about anything. You know, they want the real thing. They don't
want something that's a copy. They want the real McCoy.
Okay. Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it's clear. I hope it was very informative.
Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.