Macintosh, mackintosh, McIntosh

Photo of author

Grammarist

Macintosh (now usually just Mac) is one of a series of computers made by the Apple company. mackintosh is a style of waterproof raincoat invented in the 1820s by Charles Macintosh (the was added to the raincoat name almost immediately). A McIntosh is a type of red apple grown primarily in eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S.

Macintosh and McIntosh are proper nouns, meaning the first letter (along with the in McIntosh) is capitalized. Mackintosh is a common noun, so it is not capitalized. The plurals are Macintoshesmackintoshes, and McIntoshes.

Examples

They take top-boots and Mackintoshes from across the water and caricature our fashions ; they read a little, very little, Shakspeare, and caricature our poetry. [The Corsair (1839)]

Given a roadster of this description, and a light, open wagon fitted with a stout spring, with lamps, and possibly with a small break ; given also a sympathetic companion and a mackintosh … what more delightful than to take the road at any time between April and November! [Atlantic Monthly (1890)]

In 16 years Mr. Davis has changed a profit-less orchard into a prosperous multi-thousand-dollar business in Mcintosh apples. [Life (1949)]

As Apple Computer, Inc.’s Macintoshes infiltrate corporate computering environments currently dominated by MS-DOS-based microcomputers, users are demanding more sophisticated links between the two worlds.  [Network World (1987)]

Sure I am ready for Y2K and always have been. I use a Macintosh and the people who designed it must have looked at a calendar and said that their computers are long lived enough to make it well into the new millennium and they are. [letter to BBC News (1998)]

And when he appeared at a university ceremony in 1940, his bare feet and legs suggested that he was naked save for a mackintosh. [Telegraph (2008)]

An unseasonably warm winter and early spring has exposed the trees of New York’s iconic McIntosh apples to a potential crop-killing freeze. [Newsday (2012)]