Red herring is an English-language idiom, a logical fallacy that misleads or detracts from the issue. It is also a literary device that leads readers or characters towards a false conclusion, often used in mystery or detective fiction.
The origin of the expression has a number of theories. Conventional wisdom has long attributed it to a technique of training hounds to follow a scent, or of distracting hounds during a fox hunt, but modern linguistic research suggests that it was most likely a literary device invented in 1807 by English polemicist William Cobbett, and never an actual practice of hunters. The phrase was later borrowed to provide a formal name for the logical fallacy, and is also a formal name for a literary device or technique.
Read more about Red Herring: Logical Fallacy, Literary Device, History of The Idiom
Famous quotes containing the words red herring, red and/or herring:
“Now wait a minute. You listen to me. I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex- wives, and several bartenders dependent on me. And I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“To motorists bound to or from the Jersey shore, Perth Amboy consists of five traffic lights that sometimes tie up week-end traffic for miles. While cars creep along or come to a prolonged halt, drivers lean out to discuss with each other this red menace to freedom of the road.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Have caviar if you like, but it tastes like herring to me.”
—William A. Drake (1900–1965)