The Real McCoy

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Disappointingly, this expression does not derive from a Star Trek episode in which they cloned the starship’s doctor.

Common consensus has it, instead, as a bastardisation of McKay, surviving from anonymous, over-apostrophied Glaswegian poem The De’il’s Hallowe’en, which calls out “A drappie o’ the real MacKay”.

McKay, we suppose, was some kind of Scotch whisky; a drappie something like a “wee dram”, so to say.

So “the real McCoy” wasn’t a McCoy at all. Come in Alannis Morissette - that is ironic.

See also

• Wikipedia on the topic