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 m
²
in 1949, 154 m
²
in 1973, and a whopping 234 m
²
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.