the magoffin?

[Garson O'Toole]

Many thanks to Jon for pointing out the word McGuffin, and the OED
editors for finding the remarkable 1939 document.

I think that a theory put forward in 1945 is intriguing. "McGuffin"
may have been derived from "mongoose".

There is a tale about a package containing an imaginary mongoose, and
this tale may have been modified to yield the Hitchcockian version
with the term McGuffin substituted for mongoose. I will try to post
about this soon when I have some more time.

Garson

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      the magoffin?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The OED's new entry on Hitchcock's _McGuffin_  says it is "probably from the
> surname _MacGuffin_,
> allegedly borrowed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), English film director,
> from a humorous story involving a diversion of this kind."
>
> Could be. But since no one has discovered the story, I'll throw out the
> possibility that the name to look for might have been spelled "Magoffin."
>
> However, the utter lack of corrobration makes it quite plausible that
> Hitchcock, for reasons unknowable, arbitrarily began to use the
> less-than-commonplace surname {MacGuffin/ McGuffin/ Magoffin} etc., as a
> kind of synonym for "whatchamacallit" in a uniquely narrow sense - and that
> his story of the men on the train is, well, just another Hitchcockian
> McGuffin.
>
> JL
>
>
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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