Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose
Garson O'Toole
adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Wed Oct 27 15:12:27 UTC 2010
I have checked two of the early citations (on paper and microfilm) for
the word McGuffin (as a gift) that were found by Doug Wilson in
snippet form.
The word appears in an article by Robert Haven Schauffler that is
described as a "daydream about some words we need in English." The
initial sentence is "Despite the milion-odd entries in the latest
dictionary, there are not nearly enough words to allow us to say what
we mean."
Cite: 1925, Peter Pantheism by Robert Haven Schauffler, Chapter:
Unborn Words, Page 57-58, The Macmillan Company, New York. (Google
snippet; Verified on paper)
There is no end to our needs. One of them is "impreciation," to denote
the opposite of appreciation. Another is some single word for
"pleasantly disappointed." Might the two be telescoped into
"pleasappointed"? I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a
"McGuffin" is a gift that is not to be opened until Christmas.
http://books.google.com/books?id=elgwAAAAIAAJ&q=mcguffin#search_anchor
Cite: 1926 March, The Writer: An Authors' Monthly Forum, The Essay:
"Unborn Words" by Robert Haven Schauffler, Page 105, Column 2, Writer,
Inc., Boston, Massachusetts. (Google snippet; Verified on microfilm)
http://books.google.com/books?id=tCQ5AAAAMAAJ&q=mcguffin#search_anchor
The text surrounding McGuffin is the same in this reference. A note at
the beginning of the article "Unborn Words" states:
FROM PETER PANTHEISM, (THE MACMILLAN CO., 1924)
COPYRIGHT 1925 BY ROBERT HAVEN SHAUFFLER
However, the 1924 date above appears to be inaccurate since direct
examination of the book Peter Pantheism reveals a publication date of
1925 and a copyright date of 1925.
Previously, Stephen Goranson checked a citation in The Century
Magazine. All three of these early cites for McGuffin as a gift point
to the same essay by Robert Haven Schauffler that was reprinted in
multiple locations.
Garson
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
> about an imaginary mongoose
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The following use of M'Guffin and McGuffin may be irrelevant--so a McGuffin?-- but in case no/yes:
> "Rienzi M'Guffin's Plot," Tid-Bits: An Illustrated Weekly For These Times [New York] v. 2 March 5, 1887, though listed as Time [London] [n.s.] vol. 6 (1887) p. 3. McGuffin erases the record of his Nov. birthdate, to replace it with Christmas, in order to save money on presents. Available at Hathi Trust:
>
> http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?seq=25&num=16&view=image&id=mdp.39015022671377&q1=%22rienzi+mcguffin%22&size=175
>
> Stephen
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Stephen Goranson [goranson at DUKE.EDU]
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 4:44 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose
>
> Interesting. Thanks. FWIW, the same sentence--I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a "McGuffin" is a gift that is not to be opened until Christmas--appears in Robert Haven Schauffler, "Some Words We Need," The Century Magazine, vol. 109 no. 5, March 1925 [the vol. is 1924-1925; GB no preview gives the 1924 date] 671-8 here 677, confirmed on paper.
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Garson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 7:37 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose
>
> Nice find. There is a recent slang dictionary that refers to this gift
> sense of McGuffin when discussing the sense popularized by Hitchcock.
>
> Dictionary of American Slang 4th edition edited by Barbara Ann Kipfer
> and Robert L. Chapman
>
> The entry for MacGuffin includes the following:
>
> [1930s+; first used by director Alfred Hitchcock, and perhaps
> suggested by McGuffin, "a gift that is not to be opened until
> Christmas," hence something tantalizing, found by 1925]
>
> At Amazon you can look inside one particular paperback edition of this
> slang dictionary and see the entry for MacGuffin:
> Collins Reference; 4 Reprint edition (August 19, 2008).
> The page is blocked in Google Books.
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>> Subject: Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
>> about an imaginary mongoose
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On 10/17/2010 8:19 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject: Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
>>> about an imaginary mongoose
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Not just interesting and entertaining: brilliant!
>>>
>>> It isn't clear whether _Time_ got their version of the story directly or
>>> indirectly from Hitchcock himself.
>>>
>>> Surely Hitchock, like most literate Britons, knew the difference between a
>>> mongoose and a McGuffin. (Mongooses figure prominently in both Kipling and
>>> Saki.) This, even more than the footnote, suggests that he'd heard the stor=
>>> y
>>> with "McGuffin" already in it, especially since in his version the animal o=
>>> r
>>> apparatus is used to catch tigers, which is beyond the capability of
>>> mongooses.
>> --
>>
>> No doubt Hitchcock's story was equivalent to the mongoose story (I've
>> heard a few variants myself).
>>
>> But of course it's possible that the story actually had nothing at all
>> to do with the origin of the term "McGuffin", but was only connected to
>> this "McGuffin" as a retrospective guess or error (by Hitchcock or
>> somebody else).
>>
>> At G-books, apparently the same passage twice, in disgusting snippet
>> form, dated 1925 and 1926 (of course the date etc. should be checked):
>>
>> <<I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a "McGuffin" is a gift
>> that is not to be opened until Christmas.>>
>>
>> This appears to be in a light/humorous piece about newly-coined words or
>> new words which are needed, so it's not clear (to me) whether "McGuffin"
>> referring to a Christmas present really existed previously.
>>
>> Anyway, assuming this passage is what it seems to be and correctly
>> dated, we have a candidate for the ancestral "McGuffin", surely
>> appropriate in form and perhaps appropriate in sense also. I suppose
>> that the necklace or document or whatever item is called for by a story
>> plot is something which for suspense purposes is not to be revealed
>> until a certain point ... so it's "do not reveal until the
>> climax/denouement/whatever", a good analogy to "do not open until Xmas".
>>
>> Pardon me if this quotation has appeared here before; I don't see it in
>> the archive.
>>
>> -- Doug Wilson
>>
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