MCGUFFIN
[Q] From Sharon Villines of the Archives of Detective Fiction: “I have three spellings for the word that was used by Hitchcock to refer to the object of desire that sets off a mystery story: MacGuffin, McGuffin, maguffin. Which is the earliest spelling?”
[A] According to the Third Additions Volume of the OED, the first usage recorded is a typescript of a lecture that Alfred Hitchcock gave at Columbia University on 30 March 1939. In that text, presumably his lecture notes rather than a transcript, the word is spelled MacGuffin. He is said to have derived it from a story about two Scottish men in a train, in which a plot device of this kind occurs; presumably MacGuffin is the way it was spelled in that story. However, the more common spelling now is McGuffin, which is the OED’s preference and the only one I’ve encountered in British publications. It’s possible, though, that the lower-case version may prevail as the word becomes generic and the links to its origin are lost.
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