

The scent would catch the dog’s attention and lead it away from the area you wanted to keep them in or it could be done in a more literal sense by using actual red-dyed fish as a distraction for tracking dogs. Tossing a red herring could be as simple as dragging a whole smoked fish across the ground behind you. In a way, they were often kind of like the poor man’s equivalent of a smokescreen. Red herrings were used to distract hunting dogs from their true target. That’s why the origin of the expression red herring is so interesting. It’s always a bit disconcerting when your favorite literary figure is based on someone who was very much real.

Where Does The Expression Red Herring Actually Come From? The actual purpose of red herrings or using them as a method of refutation is to make sure ou can properly counter your opponent’s points without having to refute their actual argument.īy making them focus on something else, it means you can potentially win the argument without having to address the core issues. They can be used in many different ways, but they always serve to make sure that everyone is talking about something else, meaning that they won’t be able to focus on the original issue. Red herrings are typically used when someone needs to refute an argument that has already been made. They can be used in mystery novels to distract readers from figuring out who committed a crime and why – because once the truth comes out, people see that the red herring was just a distraction and not important at all. Red herrings appear in film and literature quite often as well. This can take many different forms, from making false statements about their political opponents to providing misleading information about their own company and its products. When someone makes an inaccurate statement or misleads others intentionally, they’re using a red herring. What Is a red herring What Is a red herring?Ī red herring is something that distracts someone from the point they were making.
