Although Cobbett popularized the figurative usage, Thomas Nashe wrote in his 1599 pamphlet Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe, “Next, to draw on hounds to a scent, to a red herring skin there is nothing comparable,” that red herring was used for scenting hounds in a literal sense.Quinion adds: “This story, and extended repetition of it in 1833, was enough to get the figurative sense of the term red herring into his readers’ minds, regrettably also with the false notion that it originated from some actual hunting practice. It was only a temporary effect of the political red herring because, on Saturday, the scent turned as cold as stone, according to Cobbett’s account of using a red herring to divert hounds pursuing a hare.The earliest reference to using herring for distracting hounds is a piece published on February 14, 1807, in his controversial periodical Political Register. In the article, radical journalist William Cobbett criticizes the English press for incorrectly reporting Napoleon’s defeat. According to Cohen and Ross, and supported by the OED, this is the origin of the symbolic meaning of the red herring.In any case, the herring was used to direct the hounds and horses along the trail rather than to divert them from it. Nicholas Cox misinterpreted this advice and wrote that it should be used to train hounds in the notes of another book published around the same time (not horses).Langbaine advised readers to use herrings. Ross looked into the background of the tale and discovered the earliest mention of using herrings for training animals was in a tract on horsemanship written in 1697 by Gerland Langbaine.The phrase did not originate from a hunting practice, according to two articles by Professor Gerald Cohen and Robert Scott Ross that were published in Comments on Etymology (2008), supported by etymologist Michael Quinion, and accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary.The phrase “Drawing a red herring across the path” is defined by Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1981) as “to divert attention from the main question by some side issue.” Once more, a “dried, smoked and salted” herring, when “drawn across a fox’s path, destroy the scent and sets the hounds at fault.”Another variation of the dog story was provided by Robert Hendrickson (1994), who says fugitive inmates used the firm fish to deter hounds from pursuing them.

The dog eventually mastered following the original scent instead of the more potent one. Later, when the dog was being taught to heed the faint odor of a fox or a badger, the coach would drag a red herring (whose intense scent baffles the animal) perpendicular to the training trail.

There are several versions of the story, but one claims that the smelly red herring was tugged along a trail until a puppy learned to follow the scent.

The term “strongly cured kipper” can be traced back to the mid-13th century in the poetry of Bibbesworth’s The Treatise by Walter: “He ete no ffyssh But heryng red.” This process results in the fish having a particularly pungent smell and turning its flesh reddish. The term “red herring” refers to a particularly potent kipper made from fish (typically herring) that has been strongly brine-cured or heavily smoked rather than a specific fish species.

Because Topic B is more important than Topic A, it needs to be remembered or addressed.The speaker raises Topic B, which is unrelated to Topic A.Key Facts & Information Outline of a Red Herring: See the fact file below for more information about Red Herring, or download the comprehensive worksheet pack, which contains 5 worksheets and can be used in the classroom or homeschooling environment. A red herring may be employed in arguments unintentionally or purposely, as in mystery novels or as part of persuasive techniques (such as politics). It could be a literary technique or a logical mistake that steers readers or audiences in the wrong direction. What are examples of other informal fallacies?Ī red herring deviates from or confuses a pertinent or significant subject.Why is red herring a type of informal logical fallacy?.Download the Red Herring Facts & Worksheets.

To be a red herring logical fallacy