Tiny houses, big lexicon

The comedian Steven Wright once quipped, "You can\´t have everything. Where would you put it?" Yet for many years now, it seems as though consumers have been determined to buy everything, and are purchasing ever-bigger houses in which to store all their knickknacks and doodads. Back in 1900, the average U.S. single-family house was 65 square meters (700 square feet). That jumped to 93 m² in 1949, 154 m² in 1973, and a whopping 234 m² in 2007 (according to the U.S. Census Bureau). This trend led to a raft of new words that reflect a world increasingly flabbergasted by house sizes: Really big houses became monster homes or megahomes; oversize houses that didn\´t fit the neighborhood were called McMansions or Godzilla homes; a massive house crammed into a small lot was a bigfoot home; garishly large dwellings were known as starter castles.