Akademik

n.

A traditional, one-story ranch-style house, particularly one in a suburban development where the surrounding houses have a similar design. Also: ranch-burger, ranch burger.

You'll see examples of Ranch homes whose only charm may have been their location transformed into a wide variety of architectural expressions. In an odd twist, the very fact that many of these homes began as plain and ordinary "Ranchburgers" is exactly the reason they are great makeover candidates.

— M. Caren Connolly, "Ranches: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling, and Building New ," Taunton Press, August, 2003

Such Ox-Bow incidentals are to be expected in this "back porch country" of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle region, now mostly hardscrabble and pocked with more characterless "prefab ranchburgers" than in its renowned oil-rich or cattle country days.

— Gordon Hauptfleisch, "Hogman, Pass By," The San Diego Union-Tribune, December 15, 2002

What has the ''modern'' stolen from the average house? And is it comfort that is missing? I cannot think so. What, instead, has been scorned for some time is any serious consideration of bourgeois taste. The architectural historian and critic Colin Rowe called one favorite design ''the ranchburger,'' and now such buildings get from the critics little better than bites.

— William H. Gass, "Making ourselves comfortable," The New York Times, August 3, 1986

Kell Pollard sent me this word, and noted that the name comes from those ubiquitous ranch houses (also called ranchers or ramblers) that, in neighborhoods around the country, have been "replicated with the zeal of McDonald's hamburgers." I'm lovin' it!