Mack Daddy

Hey fella, looking for a swim upstream?

Dear Word Detective: I’ve just discovered how hard it is to do your job. I know that the phrase “mack daddy” came originally from the word “mack,” meaning “pimp,” and that “mack” was short for “mackerel,” the fish. I also know that the word “mackerel” has been slang for “pimp” in other languages for a long time (e.g., French “maquereau”), but how did this rather innocuous-looking fish come to be associated with procurement and how did the word get into the English language? — Jackie.

Well, it wasn’t that hard until you came up with this question. This one gives me a headache.

“Mack daddy” is US slang, primarily in African-American use, currently used to mean a successful, influential and stylish man, especially one popular with women. It is true that “mack daddy” was formerly (and sometimes still is) understood to mean a prosperous pimp or other criminal. But usage has shifted over the past decade or so, and “mack daddy” (or “mac daddy”) is now often used as a more positive and generalized term, as in this citation from Ebony magazine in 1999: “[Comedian Chris] Rock … remembers … staying up late on school nights to watch the Tonight Show. ‘Especially when Bill Cosby used to host …,’ Rock says. ‘He was like so cool. He was a Mac Daddy back then.’”

The phrase “mack daddy” itself seems to date to the early 1950s, when an anonymously-composed song called “The Great MacDaddy” became popular in the African-American community. The element “daddy” is fairly straightforward, having originally been slang for “pimp” that later, like “mack daddy” itself, broadened into a more general term for a man with a commanding presence.

The “mack,” however, is where the headache comes in. It does appear to be short for “mackerel,” but the root of “mackerel” itself is in some dispute. And some fairly weird dispute at that. The standard theory suggests that the root of “mackerel” in French reflects an old Germanic word for “broker” or “pimp” because it was believed that the mackerel fish either has some odd reproductive habits itself or (I swear I am not making this up) assisted somehow in the reproductive antics of herring.

In any case, the French have been using their equivalent of “mackerel” to mean both the fish and a pimp for several centuries, and “mackerel,” which appeared in the “fish” sense in English in the 14th century, has also been used in the “procurer” sense in English since sometime in the 15th century.