Red herring (plot device)
Encyclopedia
Red herring is an idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...

atic expression referring to the rhetorical or literary tactic of diverting attention away from an item of significance. For example, in mystery fiction
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

, where the identity of a criminal is being sought, an innocent party may be purposefully cast in a guilty light by the author through the employment of deceptive clues, false emphasis, "loaded" words or other descriptive tricks of the trade. The reader's suspicions are thus misdirected, allowing the true culprit to go (temporarily at least) undetected. A false protagonist
False protagonist
In fiction, a false protagonist is a literary technique, often used to make the plot more jarring or more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions, that constructs a character who the audience assumes is the protagonist but is later revealed not to be...

 is another example of a red herring.

In a literal sense, there is no such fish species as a "red herring
Herring
Herring is an oily fish of the genus Clupea, found in the shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans, including the Baltic Sea. Three species of Clupea are recognized. The main taxa, the Atlantic herring and the Pacific herring may each be divided into subspecies...

"; rather it refers to a particularly strong kipper
Kipper
A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold smoked.In the United Kingdom, in Japan, and in some North American regions they are often eaten for breakfast...

, meaning a fish—typically a herring but not always—that has been strongly cured in brine
Brine
Brine is water, saturated or nearly saturated with salt .Brine is used to preserve vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, in a process known as brining . Brine is also commonly used to age Halloumi and Feta cheeses, or for pickling foodstuffs, as a means of preserving them...

 and/or heavily smoked. This process makes the fish particularly pungent smelling and, with a strong enough brine, turns its flesh reddish. This term, in its literal sense as a strongly cured kipper, can be dated to the late Middle Ages, as quoted here c1400 Femina (Trin-C B.14.40) 27: "He eteþ no ffyssh But heryng red." Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 used it in his diary entry of 28 February 1660 "Up in the morning, and had some red herrings to our breakfast, while my boot-heel was a-mending, by the same token the boy left the hole as big as it was before."

The idiomatic sense of "red herring" has, until very recently, been thought to originate from a supposed technique of training young scent hound
Scent hound
Scent hounds are a type of hound that primarily hunts by scent rather than sight. The Scenthound breeds are generally regarded as having some of the most sensitive noses among canines....

s. There are variations of the story, but according to one version, the pungent red herring would be dragged along a trail until a puppy learned to follow the scent. Later, when the dog was being trained to follow the faint odour of a fox
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...

 or a badger
Badger
Badgers are short-legged omnivores in the weasel family, Mustelidae. There are nine species of badger, in three subfamilies : Melinae , Mellivorinae , and Taxideinae...

, the trainer would drag a red herring (whose strong scent confuses the animal) perpendicular to the animal's trail to confuse the dog. The dog would eventually learn to follow the original scent rather than the stronger scent. An alternate etymology points to escaping convicts who would use the pungent fish to throw off hounds in pursuit.

In reality, the technique was probably never used to train hounds or help desperate criminals. The idiom probably originates from an article published 14 February 1807 by radical journalist William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...

 in his polemical Political Register
Political Register
The Political Register was a weekly newspaper founded by William Cobbett in 1802 and ceased publication in 1835, the year of his death.Originally propounding Tory views, and costing a shilling, Cobbett changed his editorial line to embrace radicalism, such as advocating widening the suffrage...

. In a critique of the English press, which had mistakenly reported Napoleon's defeat, Cobbett recounted that he had once used a red herring to deflect hounds in pursuit of a hare, adding "It was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone." As British etymologist Michael Quinion
Michael Quinion
Michael Quinion is a British etymologist and writer. He runs the web site World Wide Words, devoted to linguistics. He graduated from Cambridge University, where he studied physical sciences after which he joined BBC radio as a studio manager.-Writer:...

 says, "This story, and [Cobbett's] extended repetition of it in 1833, was enough to get the figurative sense of red herring into the minds of his readers, unfortunately also with the false idea that it came from some real practice of huntsmen."

See also

  • And Then There Were None
    And Then There Were None
    And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...

  • Chekhov's gun
    Chekhov's gun
    Chekhov's gun is a literary technique whereby an apparently irrelevant element is introduced early in the story whose significance becomes clear later in the narrative. The concept is named after Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who mentioned several variants of the concept in letters...

  • Chewbacca defense
    Chewbacca defense
    The Chewbacca defense is a legal strategy used in episode 27 of South Park, "Chef Aid", which premiered on October 7, 1998, as the fourteenth episode of the second season. The aim of the argument is deliberately to confuse the jury by making use of the fallacy known as ignoratio elenchi, or a red...

  • Five Red Herrings
    Five Red Herrings
    Five Red Herrings is a 1931 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. It was retitled Suspicious Characters for its first publication in the United States, but reverted to its original title in subsequent printings....

  • Foreshadowing
    Foreshadowing
    Foreshadowing or adumbrating is a literary device in which an author indistinctly suggests certain plot developments that might come later in the story.-Repetitive designation and Chekhov's gun:...

  • Ignoratio elenchi
    Ignoratio elenchi
    Ignoratio elenchi is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question...

  • Twelve Red Herrings
    Twelve Red Herrings
    Twelve Red Herrings is a 1994 short story collection by British writer and politician Jeffrey Archer. Archer challenges his readers to find "twelve red herrings", one in each story. The book reached #3 in the Canadian best-sellers list. J. K...

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