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 and/or herring:
“Take a red book called TELEPHONE,
size eight by four. There it sits.
My red book, name, address and number.
These are all people that I somehow own.
Yet some of these names are counterfeit.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Have caviar if you like, but it tastes like herring to me.”
—William A. Drake (1900–1965)