Meaning
A piece of information or argument introduced to mislead people and draw attention away from the real issue. Common in discussion of mysteries, trials, debates, and political argument. Neutral register; implies deliberate or accidental misdirection and is especially common in critical discussion. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A red herring is literally a strongly smoked kipper, reddish and pungent; the literal term goes back to Middle English (the late 13th-century Anglo-Norman Treatise of Walter of Bibbesworth). An early proverb, 'neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring' (recorded by Heywood in 1546, with antecedents around 1480), used the herring to stand for the poor. The traditional explanation for the figurative sense - that hunters dragged smoked herrings to lay false scent trails for hounds - has been undermined: research by Gerald Cohen and Robert Scott Ross (2008), endorsed by Michael Quinion and accepted by the OED, traces the herring-and-hounds image to a 1697 horsemanship tract about training horses (later misread as hounds), and notes the practice guided animals along a trail rather than distracted them. The figurative sense in fact appears with the radical journalist William Cobbett, whose Political Register of 14 February 1807 recounted dragging a herring to put hounds off a scent as a metaphor for the press being diverted by false news of Napoleon's defeat. Cobbett's childhood story is considered apocryphal, but it launched the idiom.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- draw a red herring across the trail
- red herrings
- throw out a red herring
Usage Examples
- The inspector realized the burnt letter was a red herring planted to delay the investigation.
- Opponents dismissed the cost estimate as a red herring that ignored the main question of safety.
- Mystery writers deliberately plant red herrings so the solution is not obvious too early.