MacGuffin
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English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Used by Alfred Hitchcock, as an arbitrary Scottish surname. The actual name comes from Ulster: Mc- (“son of”) + Irish dubh (“black”) + Irish Fionn (literally “fairheaded”).[1] See also Wikipedia's MacGuffin § History and use.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]MacGuffin (plural MacGuffins)
- (narratology) A plot element or other device used to catch the audience's attention and maintain suspense, but whose exact nature has fairly little influence over the storyline.
- 2000, Steven Spielberg, Lester D. Friedman, Brent Notbohm, Steven Spielberg: Interviews:
- " […] But we wound up realizing you really can't top yourself. You just tell a different story and hope the new MacGuffin is as compelling as the last MacGuffin."
- 2005, Thomas M. Disch, On SF:
- A paleontologist lately returned from an expedition to Wyoming, where he unearthed the bones of the first brontosaurus (and supplied guns to the Indians on behalf of the Foreign Office, which had succeeded in its policy of balkanizing the North American continent) Mallory comes into possession of the MacGuffin during a Derby Day encounter with Byron's daughter (and Babbage's protégée) Ada. Thereafter he is hounded by a whole rogue's gallery of villains bent on reclaiming the MacGuffin.
See also
[edit]Proper noun
[edit]MacGuffin (plural MacGuffins)
- A surname.
Statistics
[edit]- According to data collected by Forebears in 2014, MacGuffin is the 736,413st most common surname in the United States, belonging to 13 individuals. Less common than the form McGuffin.
References
[edit]Further reading
[edit]Categories:
- English terms derived from Irish
- English terms prefixed with Mc-
- English compound terms
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Narratology
- English terms with quotations
- English proper nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English surnames
- en:Fiction
- en:Plot devices