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🕵️ A false clue 🐟 A smoked fish 📄 A draft document
red herring

red herring

1 7.0
Smoked and dried small fish with a red color
  • noun
  • /rɛd ˈhɛrɪŋ/
  • UK
translation icon : arenque ahumado
  • Culinary experts often recommend using red herring in salads due to its rich taste and distinctive color.

Examples

  • Many people enjoy red herring for its unique flavor when paired with other ingredients in a dish.

  • I like to eat fish, but red herring gets old after a while.

    Blog text (11)

  • In the early 15th century, they used to smoke and dry the fish called red herring to preserve it for longer.

Synonyms

smoked herring
vsred herring
1 3.3

A herring that has been dried and smoked, giving it a red color and strong salty taste

is the same preparation expressed by a different traditional name
kippered herring
vsred herring
  • UK
6.8

A fish split open, salted, and smoked, often served for breakfast

is similar but lacks the specific splitting and salting step

Surface Forms

red herring singular
red herrings plural

Morphology

red + herring

The literal words 'red' (a color) and 'herring' (a fish) do not signal the specialized financial meaning 'preliminary prospectus' (or the broader idiomatic sense 'distractor'), so the overall sense is not compositionally derivable. This is an idiomatic, register-specific term whose link to its meaning is historical and unpredictable, so a B1 learner knowing the constituents would not infer the MWE's meaning without prior exposure.

Etymology

Red herring originally meant a herring that had been dried and smoked until its skin turned red, which also gave the fish a very strong smell and helped it last a long time.