Origin of The Phrase "The Real McCoy"
The saying the real McCoy', meaning the real thing, has been associated with Elijah McCoy's invention of an oil-drip cup, for which he was well known. One theory is that railroad engineers' looking to avoid inferior copies would request it by name, and inquire if a locomotive was fitted with "the real McCoy system". This possible origin is mentioned as a legend in Elijah McCoy's biography at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The original publication of this claim can be traced to the December 1966 issue of Ebony, in an ad for Old Taylor publishes the claim, ending in this tag line: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name." The claim was repeated in a 1985 pamphlet printed by the Empak Publishing Company, which did not explain the origin of the expression. The attribution has been disputed, and other origin stories exist for the phrase.
The expression was first known to be published in Canada in 1881. In James S. Bond's The Rise and Fall of the "Union club": or, Boy life in Canada, a character says, "By jingo! yes; so it will be. It's the 'real McCoy,' as Jim Hicks says. Nobody but a devil can find us there."
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