MacGuffin

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock used a narrative device in some of his films that he called a "MacGuffin." It is the thing that the characters care about, and that kicks off the plot, but the audience should not be concerned with it because it is ultimately irrelevant to the plot. 

He explained the term using a surreal anecdote about two men on a train, which he repeated in interviews for decades. Hitch claimed the term was a Scottish name, and he would tell the following joke to illustrate its inherent "emptiness."

Man A: "What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?"
Man B: "Oh, that’s a MacGuffin."
Man A: "What’s a MacGuffin?"
Man B: "Well, it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."
Man A: "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands!"
Man B: "Well, then that’s no MacGuffin!" 

His point was that a MacGuffin is a purely mechanical element used to "trigger" the plot. 

Hitchcock’s personal favorite MacGuffin was the "government secrets" in North by Northwest. He called it his best because it was the emptiest. The hero asks what the villain is selling. The agent replies: "Oh, just government secrets." By refusing to even name the secrets, he proved that the object only exists to give the characters a reason to chase each other.

An additional origin note is that while Hitchcock popularized the term, he credited its creation to his friend and screenwriter Angus MacPhail. They likely chose the name because it sounded like a common Scottish surname, adding to the "nonsense" nature of the joke. Some film historians also point out that the word "guff" is British slang for "nonsense" or "empty talk," which fits the definition perfectly. 

Sometimes the MacGuffin is considered to be the same as a "red herring", but while both are plot devices used to manipulate the audience’s attention, they serve completely different structural purposes.

The MacGuffin is the motivation. It is the thing the characters are chasing. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as the characters want it badly enough to drive the story.

A non-Hitchcock example is the statue in The Maltese Falcon. Everyone is killing each other to find it, but it could have been any object that was considered valuable by the characters.

A red herring, as I have written earlier) is a clue, character, or plot point that is intentionally misleading. It’s designed to make you reach a false conclusion so that the eventual "twist" is more shocking.

In the Harry Potter book and movie series (especially in The Prisoner of Azkaban), we are led to believe that Sirius Black is a villain trying to kill Harry. Throughout much of the series, Snape is also seen as working to harm Harry, when in fact he is protecting him.

Red Herrings

 

The term "red herring" has an origin story that is, appropriately enough, a bit of a "red herring" itself. I was told long ago in some literature class that it came from the practice of using fish to distract hunting dogs. Turns out that is not true.

First, there is no such biological species as a "red herring." A red herring is a standard herring that has been heavily salted and smoked for a long period. This process turns the fish's flesh a reddish-brown color and gives it an incredibly strong, pungent odor. Before refrigeration, this was a common way to preserve fish so they would last for months.

The popular and false origin is that in the 17th century, escaped prisoners would drag a smelly red herring across a trail to confuse hunting hounds and lead them away from their scent.

However, modern etymologists have found no historical evidence that this was ever done by escapee or hunters trying to distract dogs. Actually, red herrings were sometimes used to train dogs or horses to stay on a scent or to get them used to distractions, not to trick them during a real hunt.

So, what is the true origin? The figurative meaning we use today in writing is that a red herring is something that intentionally misleads or distracts. It was popularized by an English journalist named William Cobbett in 1807. Cobbett wrote an article in his periodical, Political Register, where he told a story (perhaps true) about how he had used a red herring as a boy to lead a pack of hounds away from a hare. He used this story to attack the English press for prematurely reporting that Napoleon had been defeated. He accused the newspapers of using a "political red-herring" to distract the public from important domestic issues.

I've heard the term used in that way in 2025 and 2026 to explain how the Trump administration tries to distract the press and public from important issues by creating distractions.

Because Cobbett’s writing was so widely read, the metaphor stuck. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became a standard term in literature and mystery writing to describe a clue designed to lead the reader down the wrong path.

A 2025 Version of Slop

Lots of people and organizations - especially dictionary publishers - do their Words of the Year lists. 

I saw that the Word of the Year 2025 from Merriam-Webster is "SLOP."

Not a new word, so I figured it must have a new meaning or usage. Their editors define slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence. "

A little word we all know to sum up the videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, “workslop” reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats. 

People slop annoying, and they keep on clicking on it and watching and reading.

“AI Slop is Everywhere,” warned The Wall Street Journal, while admitting to enjoying some of those cats. 

“AI Slop Has Turned Social Media Into an Antisocial Wasteland,” reported CNET.

Slop is like slime, sludge, and muck. It has a wet sound and seems like something you don't want to get your hands on. But we do tend to grab at some of this ooze.

The original sense of the word, in the 1700s, was “soft mud.” 

In the 1800s, it came to mean “food waste” (as in “pig slop”), and then more generally, “rubbish” or “a product of little or no value.”

A few other possible hot words or terms of 2025. You can look them up if you're curious.

• Gerrymander 
• Touch Grass
• Performative
• Tariff
• Six Seven 
• Conclave

Sunlight‑Based Terms for Times of Day

The transition from day to night (and vice versa) is divided into several phases based on the Sun's position relative to the horizon. While we often use words like "dusk" and "twilight" interchangeably in casual conversation, they have precise astronomical and poetic meanings.

Night - The Sun is more than 18° below the horizon; no scattered sunlight reaches the lower atmosphere.

Astronomical Twilight - The Sun is 18° to 12° below the horizon.

• Astronomical dawn — the moment the Sun reaches 18° below the horizon in the morning.

• Astronomical twilight (morning) — faint light appears, but most people still perceive full darkness.

• Astronomical twilight (evening) — faint light persists after sunset.

• Astronomical dusk — the moment the Sun sinks past 18° below the horizon in the evening.

Nautical Twilight - The Sun is 12° to 6° below the horizon.

• Nautical dawn — Sun reaches 12° below the horizon; horizon becomes visible.

• Nautical twilight (morning) — sailors historically used this light to see both stars and the horizon.

• Nautical twilight (evening) — horizon still visible but dim.

• Nautical dusk — Sun reaches 12° below the horizon; horizon visibility fades.

Civil Twilight - The Sun is 6° below the horizon up to the horizon.

• Civil dawn — Sun is 6° below the horizon; enough light for many outdoor activities.

• Civil twilight (morning) — brightening sky before sunrise.

• Civil twilight (evening) — lingering light after sunset.

• Civil dusk — Sun reaches 6° below the horizon; artificial light usually becomes necessary.

Sunrise & Sunset - The Sun crosses the horizon.

• Sunrise — the upper limb of the Sun appears.

• Sunset — the upper limb of the Sun disappears.

Daylight - The Sun is above the horizon.

• Early morning — shortly after sunrise.

• Morning — increasing sunlight.

• Midday / Noon — Sun at its highest point.

• Afternoon — declining but strong sunlight.

• Late afternoon — warm, angled light.

• Golden hour — warm, low-angle sunlight shortly after sunrise or before sunset.

• Blue hour — cool-toned light just before sunrise or after sunset, overlapping civil twilight.

Dawn & Dusk are umbrella terms.

• Dawn — the entire transition from night to sunrise (all twilight phases).

• Dusk — the entire transition from sunset to night (all twilight phases).

Deep Night occurs after astronomical dusk and before astronomical dawn.

• Night — full darkness.

• Midnight — the midpoint of the night (civil time, not astronomical).

Upper and Lower Case

Upper and lower cases

I love this very literal word origin story. The terms uppercase and lowercase that we associate with the letters of the alphabet evolved directly from the physical storage system used by typesetters in the era of the movable-type printing press.

We go back to the days of Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The movable type system in early printing meant that every single letter, numeral, and punctuation mark was cast as an individual block of metal, called a sort.

To compose a page of text, a typesetter (or compositor) had to pick out each sort one by one and arrange them backward in a frame.

To keep the hundreds of different sorts organized and easily accessible, printers stored them in compartmentalized wooden trays called type cases. Traditionally, the typesetter would use a pair of cases, which were set up on a working stand, often angled and stacked. The upper case, which was set above and behind the lower one, held the capital letters. Capital letters (which were also known as majuscule letters) are used far less frequently in English text, so they could be stored slightly further away.

The lower case, positioned below and closer to the typesetter, held the small letters (also known as minuscule letters) that make up the vast majority of any given text.

The arrangement of the letter compartments within the lower case was based on letter frequency. The largest compartments, and those closest to the typesetter, were for the most common letters, like 'e', 't', 'a', and 'o', saving the typesetter time and effort.

The terms became standardized and filtered out from the printing trade into general language around the 18th century, thankfully replacing the older, more technical terms of majuscule and minuscule.