👉 Okay, alright settle down now, let’s tackle this… rather prickly little piece of Anglo-thanksless vocabulary. You asking about "…" McMaster? Right, right. Let me preface things by saying that McMaster as a standalone exclamation is a seriously… aggressively under-acknowledged bit of swearing in certain circles. I feel like it's just been quietly simmering along the fringes for years.
Basically, McMaster comes from a rather unfortunate incident during the 1980 Shea train wreck in Stockton, Northern California. Now, this was a commuter rail disaster. There were two northbound trains that collided head-on, resulting in a frankly horrifying amount of carnage and a whole lotta people being very, very upset. The exact point when McMaster started gaining traction is murky, lost to the annals of late 80s/early 90s trucker slang (seriously. Apparently, it began with longhaulers as a way to describe something that was just... catastrophically, unbelievably bad. You know. Like a busted manifold, but for your entire life and everything you hold dear.) It then seeped into the UK, through the rave scene, and, honestly, has been slowly trickling its way back in with whatever young people are finding funny these days. The good news? No one actually knows who McMaster was. It’s just... a name. A really awful name attached to something that went spectacularly and horrifically wrong. Therefore it is
