The McNugget: Now a Noun, Verb, and Adjective!

As is generally the case, my horrible diet cola addiction (manifests itself only in a craving for fountain soda) has led me to sample another new fast food item. This time we have McDonald's Sweet Chili Sauce.

Isn't it a strange commentary on American sauce/condiment/crap-you-put-on-other-crap obsession that McDonald's is marketing a main dish protein product (the McNugget) utilizing its dipping sauce? That seems as strange to me as marketing a steak through the steak sauce. But anyhow, I was mildly pleased by the Sweet Chili sauce. There seems to be an encouraging trend among fast food/packaged product vendors to make foods advertised as "spicy" actually spicy (anyone tried those 1st/2nd degree Doritos yet?). The Chili sauce has (for McDonald's) a fairly aggressive amount of heat. The stuff is, however, sweet as sugar.



Something else about the product that interested me was the interesting linguistic use of the word, which I always assumed was simply a noun, "McNugget." Here we have the question, "How do you Mcnugget?" on the sauce package and "I've been McNuggetized" on the nugget package. That is too many parts of speech for one fried extruded chicken globule. I kind of like it though. I am going to McNugget you across the face until you are McNuggetized. If you don't McNugget me I'm going to McNugget you in the McNuggets.