maguffin ( probably dated 1935)

Fri Oct 29 01:33:27 UTC 2010

Perhaps purely coincidental, but the Atlantic [Iowa] Telegraph of Feb. 7,
1877, p. 1 (at NerwspaperArchive) features a humorous hunting story
involving a "V-gun" used to shoot flocks of migrating geese with one shot
and stilts used to catch giraffes in South Africa. The character who
delivers the punchline is "Mr. Maguffin."

Several papers of the mid to late '70s carry various jokes involving "Mr.
Magruder" and "Mr. Maguffin."   A vaudeville team perhaps?

JL

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      maguffin ( probably dated 1935)
>
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>
> Below is an excerpt that uses of the term maguffin three times in
> 1935. This is within a few years of the date of first known use of the
> term MacGuffin (McGuffin) by Hitchcock in 1939. This information is
> extracted from Google Books and I have not verified it on paper or
> microfilm, hence it may be incorrect. Also, the biographical
> information below has not been carefully vetted. Searches performed
> within the HathiTrust database yield the same volume number and year.
>
> In 1935 the Transactions of the Electrochemical Society published a
> profile of Dr. Frank Jerome Tone. Tone was a wealthy scientist and
> president of the Carborundum Company. He was awarded the Acheson Award
> by the Electrochemical Society. The profile is written by Carl G.
> Schluederberg and it claims that Tone used the term maguffin to refer
> to an implement carved from driftwood. After the excerpt I will
> present a hypothesis about why Tone used this name.
>
> Cite: 1935, Transactions of the Electrochemical Society, GB Page 18,
> [A profile of Frank Jerome Tone by Carl G. Schluederberg begins on GB
> Page 15], Volume 68, Electrochemical Society. (Google Books snippet
> view; Not verified on paper; Data may be inaccurate)
>
> The unceasing activity of his mentality is illustrated even in minor
> things. For example, at lunch on a hunting expedition during the time
> when tea is being boiled by the guides, perhaps on the sandy,
> sheltered beach of some lake, a custom in French-Canadian Quebec from
> time immemorial, while the others loll idly around grousing about the
> hard walking or cold weather or alibiing missed shots, Frank will be
> selecting odd pieces of small driftwood full of crooks and knots and
> with a penknife quickly fashion some useful article such as a cane, a
> fork, or a "maguffin," the latter, for the benefit of the uninitiated,
> is a small crotched stick fitting the hand and having a blunt rounded
> end eminently suitable for crushing a lump of sugar laid in the bottom
> of a heavy glass to which a few drops of Angostura Bitters have been
> added preparatory to the making of one of those delights to the soul
> of mankind, popularly known as an Old-Fashioned.
>
> The name "maguffin," like many another popularly acquired appellation,
> has no direct bearing on the subject at all but is simply an off-shoot
> from a story which he made use of to answer the inevitable questions
> as to what he was making. Now that prohibition, for long years largely
> a figment of some puritanical imaginations, has finally sunk into the
> proverbial innocuous desuetude, the demand for these aforementioned
> "maguffins" among Frank Tone's friends has resulted in many of the
> larger lakes of the Gatineau region being about denuded of small
> driftwood and is undoubtedly largely responsible for the present-day
> great popularity of Old-Fashioneds.
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=XhwZAQAAIAAJ&q=Jerome#search_anchor
>
> Is there any commonality in these different uses of the term maguffin?
> Here is one possibility:
>
> A maguffin is an object that is only partially known. It may be inside
> a crate, or inside a package, or wrapped up as a gift. It may also be
> only partially constructed, and thus its final shape and full purpose
> may be unknown.
>
> A questioner wants to know the identity of the object. The individual
> being questioned does not want to provide an answer. Therefore, he or
> she simply calls the object a maguffin.
>
> This fits the term "MacGuffin" in Hitchcock's version of the mongoose
> story.
>
> This fits the Christmas gift label of "McGuffin". The giver knows the
> identity but does not want to reveal it.
>
> In Frank Tone's case he was probably carving driftwood with a penknife
> and someone insistently asked him what he was working on. He did not
> want to answer. He may not have known the answer. So he said it was a
> maguffin. The excerpt says Tone told a "story", so it is possible that
> Tone told a tale similar to the one given by Hitchcock to explain the
> term maguffin.
>
> Looking forward to hearing other ideas,
> Garson
>
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