It’s early morning and I stop at the local McDonald’s drive-“thru.” I’m going to get a couple of those breakfast items that are an English muffin holding an egg, some cheese and a ham-like slice. Yes, you are right, it’s the Egg McMuffin I’m writing about here.
Okay, so I want two of these. Do I order 2 Eggs McMuffin, or 2 Egg McMuffins?
Personally, I’m of the brothers-in-law school of thought. I believe that my eggs will be prepared in the McMuffin style, and I would order 2 Eggs McMuffin. Others swear that Egg McMuffin is a single name, and so the plural would be attached to the end of the term.
IMHO, the Egg McMuffin is the item name - not a preparation of eggs. Thus, “2 Egg McMuffin’s” would be my approach. You don’t offer 2 corned beef’s sandwich, you order 2 corned beef sandwiches.
I drive up to the speaker thingy, and mumble well enough so that they only get “2” and “McMuffin”…it’s up to them to figure out exactly what I want and how many. That way I can be impressed if they get it right, and have something to complain about if they get it wrong…
Some people choose not to buy anthing from from McDonald’s. You must, presumably, have already decided to bless them with your custom. This does, unfortunately, seem to leave you with certain difficult grammatical decisions. Very troublesome, indeed.
Why not ask the McDonalds company for advice? (And if you do, and if you get any response at all, please, please share them with the rest of us. (Grammatical advice from McDonald’s would be worth seeing!)
Love, peace, and joyy to people who eat pet cats instead of McDonalds.)
Celyn
That was only a joke, and it was a very nasty one. The cat lives!)
I liked Celyn’s suggestion and went over to the McD’s site. I suspect they get a lot of these inane questions because there isn’t an obvious link to send a message. This does have crank phone call potential. Do kids still make crank calls?
Someone just told me that if I order Eggs McMuffin, the person at the register will suggest that there is only one egg for each McMuffin.
Well, as a former McDonalds grunt, allow me to interject that McMuffin eggs are a separate entity from the other eggs that are used.
I know that you realize that the egg on a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit (if you have those in your area) is a different style of egg from the poached-style egg on a McMuffin. However, at least in some stores, the egg for the McMuffin’s is the only egg that actually comes to the store as a normal egg–in shell, straight from a chicken. (Well, not straight from but you know what I mean.)
The other eggs for the biscuits and the scrambled ones for the platters come in cartons–prescrambled–and they are just poured onto the grill and cooked that way. McMuffin eggs actually have to be cracked open and steamed.
Therefore, while I agree that the proper grammar for requesting multiple McMuffin sandwiches is “Egg (or Sausage) McMuffins”, the egg on a McMuffin is a separate entity within the realm of McEggs.
I used to be too, until I needed to call my brother-in-law and realized I didn’t know my brother’s-in-law telephone number. You can’t imagine my sense of relief when I finally realized all I needed was my brother-in-law’s number.
It never occurred to me that this could be tricky until I started wondering about the plural of “passer-by”. (According to various papers, it’s “passers-by”)
