McMansion

McMansion is an informal, often critical term for a large house built in a suburban community and typically marketed to upper middle class buyers, especially in the United States. The word is a McWord, coined by pairing McDonalds, the fast food chain, with mansion, to suggest that these houses are mass produced and generic despite their size and marketing as luxury homes. Architectural historian Virginia Savage McAlester, who was among the first to describe the style common features in detail, preferred the more neutral term Millennium Mansion. The name appears to date from the early 1980s and had reached the Los Angeles Times by 1990 and the New York Times by 1998; other nicknames for the same kind of house include Persian palace, Garage Mahal, starter castle and Hummer house, while the real estate industry more often uses terms such as tract mansion or executive home.