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• MacGuffin •

Pronunciation: mê-gêf-in • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A member of the MacGuffin family. 2. An otherwise meaningless object in a film or book that provides the motivation for the action; a flimsy excuse for an action.

Notes: For an object to be a MacGuffin, it can have no significance itself; it cannot help us understand a character. Perhaps the most famous MacGuffin is the black statue in "The Maltese Falcon". Humphrey Bogart, playing Sam Spade, wraps up the case by saying, "Oh, and I've got some exhibits: the boys' guns, one of Cairo's, a thousand dollar bill I was supposed to be bribed with—and this black statuette here that all the fuss was about." A more contemporary example is the briefcase in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction". The Ark of the Covenant in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" doesn't fit the definition since it has meaning outside the film and plays a key role in the film's climax.

In Play: You can use today's word in many contexts: "I don't know why Macie had to go shopping. She's on a search for some skincare MacGuffin." In other words, Macie is ranging the mall with only the flimsiest of excuses for doing so. This word may also be spelled McGuffin: "The boss wouldn't let me leave when my project was finished, so I spent the afternoon rifling the filing cabinet for a McGuffin to get me out."

Word History: François Truffaut attributes today's word to Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock tells the story of the word this way: "Two men are on a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?'
The other answers, 'A MacGuffin.'
The first one says, 'What's a MacGuffin?'
'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in Scotland.'
'But there are no lions in Scotland.'
'Well, then, that's no MacGuffin.'" (Thanks to David von Dadelszen of New Zealand for spotting today's cinematic word—no MacGuffin itself.)

All this time I've had the wrong idea about this word. I always thought a MacGuffin was a distraction, a seemingly important plot prop or twist that really had no particular meaning to the story.

But there is a lion in Scotland. If you look at the Royal Coat of Arms of Scotland, you will see it has a red lion standing up and facing left (with respect to the viewer). If someone knows how to describe this animal using proper heraldic terminology, please correct my feeble attempt.

I am no heraldic expert, but a lion on its rear legs is usually called a lion rampant, I believe. The words for left and right facing are beyond me.

I have done a modicum of research. The lion is rampant dexter if it is facing left. And sinister if it is facing right. Now we know that sinister means left. So it turns out that it is not the viewer that is of concern here. It is the bearer of the coat of arms or whatever. He (and it is almost always he, not she) might be facing the camera as it were, with his coat of arms and from his perspective the dexter lion is facing right.

Get it?

Daft if you ask me. I mean, he can't even see it because he is behind it...