"MacGuffin" meaning in All languages combined

See MacGuffin on Wiktionary

Proper name [English]

IPA: /məˈɡʌf.ɪn/ [Received-Pronunciation, US] Audio: en-us-MacGuffin.ogg [US] Forms: MacGuffins [plural]
Etymology: Used by Alfred Hitchcock, as an arbitrary Scottish surname. The actual name comes from Ulster: Mc- (“son of”) + Irish dubh (“black”) + Irish Fionn (literally “fairheaded”). See also Wikipedia's MacGuffin § History and use. Etymology templates: {{af|en|Mc-|dubh|Fionn|lang2=ga|lang3=ga|lit3=fairheaded|t1=son of|t2=black}} Mc- (“son of”) + Irish dubh (“black”) + Irish Fionn (literally “fairheaded”) Head templates: {{en-proper noun|s}} MacGuffin (plural MacGuffins)
  1. A surname.
    Sense id: en-MacGuffin-en-name-EMUC1F3L Categories (other): English surnames
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: McGuffin

Noun [English]

IPA: /məˈɡʌf.ɪn/ [Received-Pronunciation, US] Audio: en-us-MacGuffin.ogg [US] Forms: MacGuffins [plural]
Etymology: Used by Alfred Hitchcock, as an arbitrary Scottish surname. The actual name comes from Ulster: Mc- (“son of”) + Irish dubh (“black”) + Irish Fionn (literally “fairheaded”). See also Wikipedia's MacGuffin § History and use. Etymology templates: {{af|en|Mc-|dubh|Fionn|lang2=ga|lang3=ga|lit3=fairheaded|t1=son of|t2=black}} Mc- (“son of”) + Irish dubh (“black”) + Irish Fionn (literally “fairheaded”) Head templates: {{en-noun}} MacGuffin (plural MacGuffins)
  1. (narratology) A plot element or other device used to catch the audience's attention and maintain suspense, but whose exact nature has fairly little influence over the storyline. Categories (topical): Narratology, Fiction, Plot devices Related terms: red herring
    Sense id: en-MacGuffin-en-noun-ngkiEilD Disambiguation of Fiction: 27 73 Disambiguation of Plot devices: 9 91 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms prefixed with Mc- Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 14 86 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 6 94 Disambiguation of English terms prefixed with Mc-: 29 71 Topics: human-sciences, linguistics, narratology, sciences
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: McGuffin

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for MacGuffin meaning in All languages combined (5.5kB)

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.