red herring
30
6.7
- noun
- /rɛd ˈhɛrɪŋ/
- Informal
- In the mystery novel, the author cleverly included a red herring that misled readers about the true culprit.
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Watch on YouTubeSo anarchism isn't a red herring cause anarchism is the norm for human behavior.
- So anarchism isn't a red herring cause anarchism is the norm for human behavior.
- In which case I think I think the AGP side actually is a red herring around teenage people who think they're trans.
- So we think his issue he's seeing here might be a red herring to the actual issue, whatever that may be.
- The fear and loneliness, the red herring of race and the suppression of social change among the powerless.
- You know, we love things like plot twists and red herrings and surprise endings when it comes to our stories.
- And that shows that it's a complete red herring to think that you're safe from future AI if it's not conscious.
- Very tempting, A shiny, sparkly red herring, popular one that has curtailed physicists from looking elsewhere for quite a while.
- And then I got into it and I read, I thought, this is red herring.
- But that's my that's the way I do it, you know, and like often times I'll my first pass on the script, I'll do the obvious choice and then the the red red herring choice.
Examples
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So, to me, this whole argument is a "red herring": a diversion from the more poignant issue.
Blog text (10) -
Suppose the real truth is worse than the red herrings we are all discussing here.
Blog text (9) -
And those ones are the the red herrings that I think lead people down a poor path.
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On the other hand, it might be a red herring.
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There are also a few red herrings to throw you off.
Fiction book (2002) -
Saying that this is a legal issue is a red herring.
Academic text (1998) -
China was, so to speak, used as a red herring by both candidates.
Blog text (4) -
No, Mr. Green, communism is just a red herring.
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The latter assertion is a red herring.
Academic text (2004) -
But a preoccupation with motive is a red herring.
Academic text (2018)
Synonyms
33
6.8
Information people spread on purpose to deceive others
24
7.4
Actions that hide the truth by making things look better
19
9.5
A trick or excuse to hide the real reason
12
7.1
An action or statement that hides the real reason behind something
11
8.7
Making something unclear or hard to understand on purpose
11
5.1
An action or statement used to hide the real reason and distract people
How Misleading
Surface Forms
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 as an idiom may come from a training trick with hunting dogs: trainers dragged a smoked herring with a strong smell across a trail to make the dogs follow the wrong scent, so red herring now means 'a clue that misleads'.