Thursday Trivia: Red Herrings

You've all heard the phrase "a red herring". It's a technique used to distract you from your current pursuit.

But did you know in a literal sense, there's no such thing as a red herring?

The term came about when describing a kipper that was very heavily smoked for preservation - a process used prior to refrigeration.

The curing process turned the flesh of the kipper a reddish color.

What does that term have to do with a pet blog - other than the fact all 3 cats are now drooling over all this fish talk?

If you use a red herring to throw someone off your scent, you're referencing a hunting hound from old England.

The earliest reference is in a pamphlet dated 1599 by the Elizabethan writer Thomas Nashe. He writes, "Next, to draw on hounds to a scent, to a red herring skin there is nothing comparable."

Somehow, out of this grew a tale that a red herring was used to confuse the noses of hounds chasing a fox. Yet Michael Quinn writes in his blog "World Wide Words" that actual historical mention of the red herring isn't to trick a dog or throw him off the scent, but rather to train the dog to follow a scent in the first place.

How its meaning was flipped 180 degrees can be traced to the writings of a political journalist from the early 1800s who purposely skewed its meaning.


The use of the phrase caught on and became an idiom for purposeful redirection still in popular use today.

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Sources: Wikipedia and Michael Quinn