McGuffin (MacGuffin): Meaning, Examples and Hitchcock's Own Words

A McGuffin, more often spelled MacGuffin, is an object, secret or goal that the characters chase and the plot runs on, but whose actual nature hardly matters to the audience. The papers the spies want, the jewel the thieves fight over, the briefcase nobody opens: the story needs everyone to want it, and the reader needs only to believe that they do.

The term belongs to Alfred Hitchcock, who used it from at least 1939 and explained it at length to François Truffaut in the interviews published as Hitchcock (1967). Every Hitchcock quote below was checked in that book or in the other source named beside it.

What Is a MacGuffin?

Truffaut asked the question directly: "Isn't the MacGuffin the pretext for the plot?" Hitchcock answered: "Well, it's the device, the gimmick, if you will, or the papers the spies are after."

Then came the part that matters for a writer: "The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents, or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they're of no importance whatever."

So a MacGuffin has two sides:

• To the characters, it is everything. They lie, run and kill for it. Their wanting is what moves the plot.
• To the audience, it is almost nothing. Nobody leaves the cinema caring what was on the microfilm. They care whether the hero got out alive.

A good test: swap the MacGuffin for something else of equal value. If the story still works, it is a MacGuffin. If the story falls apart, the object is doing more than that.

McGuffin or MacGuffin: Which Spelling Is Right?

Both are used. Hitchcock's interviews and most film writing spell it MacGuffin, with a capital G. Michael Quinion, writing at World Wide Words, notes that the Oxford English Dictionary prefers McGuffin, and that books split almost evenly between the two, with McGuffin more common in British publications. Either is understood, and both are said the same way, with the stress on "guff". Pick one spelling and keep to it.

Where Does the Word MacGuffin Come From?

Hitchcock never claimed to know. In the Truffaut interviews he said: "You may be wondering where the term originated. It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train." Then he told the story:

"One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin.' The first one asks, 'What's a MacGuffin?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!' So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all."

The joke is the definition. A thing that does nothing, for a purpose that does not exist, and the conversation carries on anyway.

The earliest recorded use is Hitchcock's too. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the typescript of a lecture he gave at Columbia University on 30 March 1939. The OUP blog says the line is not in the published lecture and apparently came from the questions afterwards. "In regard to the tune" suggests he meant the tune that carries the secret in The Lady Vanishes (1938). As the blog quotes the OED: "In regard to the tune, we have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers." Note the phrase "we have a name in the studio": the word was already in use around him.

Did Angus MacPhail Coin the Term?

Possibly, and this is where most pages overstate the case. Angus MacPhail was a Scottish screenwriter and story editor who worked with Hitchcock in the 1930s and 1940s. Biographers credit him with the word: Thomas Leitch's Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock puts it as "According to Donald Spoto, Angus MacPhail coined this term", and Leonard Leff's Hitchcock and Selznick (1987) calls it "a term coined by Angus MacPhail".

Hitchcock himself does not name MacPhail in the Truffaut book. He says only that it "might be a Scottish name". The fair way to put it: MacPhail is the likely source, by the account of Hitchcock's biographers, and Hitchcock is the man who made the word famous.

Hitchcock's Kipling Origin and His "Best MacGuffin"

Hitchcock traced the idea, not the word, to Rudyard Kipling. He told Truffaut that Kipling's stories of India were often spy stories about stealing the plans of a fortress, and that "The theft of secret documents was the original MacGuffin. So the 'MacGuffin' is the term we use to cover all that sort of thing: to steal plans or documents, or discover a secret, it doesn't matter what it is."

He also said where he thought most writers go wrong: "the main thing I've learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing. I'm convinced of this, but I find it very difficult to prove it to others."

His favourite example was North by Northwest (1959): "My best MacGuffin, and by that I mean the emptiest, the most nonexistent, and the most absurd, is the one we used in North by Northwest." In Hitchcock's telling, Cary Grant asks what the villain sells, and is told: "Oh, just government secrets!" Hitchcock's verdict: "Here, you see, the MacGuffin has been boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!"

He put it more bluntly still to Richard Schickel, in the interviews printed in The Men Who Made the Movies (1975): "The macguffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience doesn't care."

What Are Some Famous MacGuffin Examples?

Is the One Ring a MacGuffin?

Usually not, and it is a useful edge case. Everyone wants the Ring, which looks like a MacGuffin. But its nature drives the story: it corrupts whoever carries it, and the climax depends on what it is and what it does to Frodo. Swap it for a box of gold and The Lord of the Rings no longer works. That is the test failing. An object whose properties shape the plot is a central story object, not a MacGuffin.

MacGuffin vs Chekhov's Gun vs Plot Device

These terms overlap, and guides often blur them.

The key line: a Chekhov's gun is fired, and how it fires matters. A MacGuffin is chased, and what it is barely matters. If your MacGuffin suddenly turns out to have a power that saves the hero at the climax, without being set up, you have turned it into a deus ex machina.

How Do You Use a MacGuffin in a Novel?

1. Make the wanting clear, not the object. Tell the reader early who wants it and what they will do to get it. That is the engine. What it is can stay vague.
2. Give each side its own reason. The thief wants money, the agent wants a promotion, the widow wants her husband's name cleared. Same object, different stakes, and every reason belongs to a character.
3. Keep it simple to state. "The ledger that proves who paid for the fire." One line. If it takes a paragraph to explain, readers start caring about the explanation instead of the people.
4. Track who holds it. A MacGuffin changes hands. Readers notice if it is in the hero's coat in chapter nine and the villain's safe in chapter ten with no scene between. This is a classic way to find a plot hole.
5. Decide whether to reveal it. Some stories open the box (the Maltese Falcon is a fake), some never do (the Pulp Fiction briefcase). Either works, as long as the ending is about the characters.
6. Do not let it win the climax. The people should resolve the story. The MacGuffin can be the prize, but not the solution.
7. Use it to show character. What someone will give up for the thing tells the reader who they are. That is where the villain's menace usually comes from.

MacGuffins suit thrillers, heists and quests most of all. In a mystery the stolen item is often one, and in a mystery novel the investigation, not the object, is what the reader follows.

A Worked Example

The Tin Box, an original mini-story.

1. Set-up. In 1952 Hull, two sisters, Nell and Ruth, inherit their father's house. Under the floor of his workshop is a locked tin box. A letter says only: "Do not let Arthur Pyle have this."
2. The wanting. Arthur Pyle, their father's old partner, offers them a large sum for "some papers of mine". A police sergeant asks, too politely, whether they have found anything. Ruth wants to sell. Nell wants to know why their father hid it.
3. The chase. The box is stolen, recovered, hidden in a pram, and passed between the sisters. Each hand-off forces one of them to lie to the other.
4. The turn. Ruth sells the box to Pyle behind Nell's back, to pay a debt Nell never knew about.
5. The end. The sisters reconcile on the station platform. Pyle's train leaves. The reader never learns what was in the box.

The box is a MacGuffin. It could hold letters, a will or a pistol, and the story would hold. What the reader follows is the sisters' trust. Now change one thing: if the box held proof that their father was a murderer, and that fact rewrote Nell's view of herself at the end, the box would be a central story object instead, and it would need setting up like a Chekhov's gun.

How Do You Track a MacGuffin in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Its Codex holds the people, places and things in a book beside the manuscript, and it finds every place a name is used as you write. That makes it a natural place to keep the MacGuffin and check where it goes.

1. Open the Codex from its button in the menu bar. In Items, click the + (New entry) and choose Item.
2. Name it ("the tin box"). In the line under the name ("One line: who or what this is"), write who wants it and why: "Pyle wants it; Father hid it; contents never revealed."
3. Open the Type menu and pick Object, or choose Edit types… to add your own, such as "MacGuffin".
4. Under Also called, add the other names the book uses for it, such as "the tin" or "Father's box". Each one is found in the text too.
5. Use the Description field for what the characters believe it is, and Origin for where it came from. The Powers / Effects field is a good check: if you find yourself filling it in, ask whether the object has stopped being a MacGuffin.
6. As you draft, every use of the name is underlined. Rest the pointer on it to see the entry's card, with Open beside to keep the entry next to the chapter. Type @ and the start of a name to insert it from the Codex.
7. When you revise, open the entry and click its Mentions tab. It lists every chapter that names the box, in manuscript order, with a count for each. Read down it to check the box never jumps from one person's hands to another's without a scene. Click a chapter to open it at the first mention.

If a common word in an alias also turns up in other senses, the Tracking tab has Not this entry, for phrases that hold the name but mean something else. For the rest of a book's reference material, what to include in a story bible covers characters, places and timelines in the same Codex.

Common Mistakes

• Over-explaining the object. Three pages on how the device works make readers care about the device. Hitchcock's lesson was the opposite: the MacGuffin is nothing.
• Nobody really wants it. A MacGuffin only works if the wanting is fierce. Weak desire, weak plot.
• Letting it solve the climax. If the object's hidden power saves the day, it is no longer a MacGuffin but a deus ex machina.
• Losing track of it. The thing changes hands more than anything else in the book. Check every hand-off.
• Calling every important object a MacGuffin. If its nature matters to the ending, it is a central object or a Chekhov's gun, and it needs a set-up.
• Crediting the word to Hitchcock alone, or to MacPhail as fact. Hitchcock gave the first recorded use and the famous explanations. MacPhail is credited by biographers, not by Hitchcock in the Truffaut book.

Sources

Retrieved 1 November 2026.

• François Truffaut, Hitchcock (Simon and Schuster, 1967), the chapter on Foreign Correspondent ("What's a MacGuffin?") and the chapter on Notorious ("The uranium MacGuffin"). Read through Open Library's search inside the Internet Archive's copy (archive.org).
• Richard Schickel, The Men Who Made the Movies (Atheneum, 1975), the Hitchcock interview (archive.org).
• Michael Quinion, "MacGuffin", World Wide Words, on the 1939 Columbia lecture, the OED's spelling and the train story's earlier versions (worldwidewords.org).
• Oxford University Press blog, "In search of the MacGuffin" (April 2024), on the OED's first citation from the lecture typescript (blog.oup.com).
• Thomas Leitch, The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock (Facts on File, 2002), entry "MacGuffin" (archive.org).
• Leonard J. Leff, Hitchcock and Selznick (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), on Angus MacPhail (archive.org).