Buzz
You’ve likely encountered a red herring in a recent book or movie, though you might not have noticed it until later. These deceptive clues are intentionally designed to mislead you into making the wrong conclusion, and they’re a favorite trick of writers across all genres.
If you’ve read or watched the Harry Potter series—and let’s be honest, who hasn’t?—you’ve likely encountered several examples of this literary device. The infamous plot twist regarding Snape’s true character, for instance, stands as one of the most enduring red herrings in modern literature.
Sometimes, red herrings are overt. In Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery And Then There Were None, the term 'red herring' is used directly to mislead the reader about a character's fate, while a red herring statue makes an appearance in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. The most obvious example, perhaps, comes from the cartoon A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, where a character perpetually blamed for various crimes is named, you guessed it, Red Herring.
So, where does this literary device originate, and why is it associated with a fish?
For some context: Herring are naturally silver, but they turn reddish-brown when smoked. Before the invention of refrigeration, this method was used to preserve the fish for extended periods. They can also have a strong odor. As noted by Gizmodo’s io9 blog, it was believed that red herrings were dragged on the ground to train hounds to track prey during the 17th century. Another theory suggests that escaped prisoners used the fish to mask their scent and throw off the dogs pursuing them.
However, io9 clarifies that red herrings were actually used to train horses instead of dogs, and only when the preferred choice—a dead cat—was unavailable. The idea was to get the horses accustomed to following a scent trail, which would make them less likely to be startled while 'following the hounds amid the noise and bustle of a fox hunt,' according to British etymologist and writer Michael Quinion, who researched the origin of the phrase red herring.
The figurative use of the phrase dates back to the early 1800s. During this period, English journalist William Cobbett wrote a possibly fictional account about how he used red herring as a child to confuse hounds tracking a hare. He expanded on this story to criticize his fellow journalists, using it as a metaphor to condemn the press for being misled by false reports of Napoleon’s defeat, as Quinion explains in a blog. 'This caused them to neglect more pressing domestic issues,' Quinion writes.
Quinion explains that a longer version of this tale was published in 1833, spreading the idiom further. While many are familiar with red herrings in pop culture, they also appear in politics and various debates. Robert J. Gula, the author of Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language, defines a red herring as 'a detail or comment inserted into a discussion, either purposefully or accidentally, that diverts attention from the main topic.'
The goal is to divert the listener or opponent from the original subject, and it's seen as a type of flawed reasoning—or, more whimsically, a logical fallacy. This modern use of red herring aligns more closely with its original meaning, but as Quinion notes, 'This doesn’t change the essence of red herring, of course: it has long been a fixed part of our language. At least now we understand its origin. Another obscure etymology has been uncovered.'
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