red herring
noun
Did you know?
Believe it or not, red herring has as much to do with hunting dogs as with brightly colored fish. Here's how: A herring is a soft-finned bony fish. People who like to eat herring have long preserved them by salting and slowly smoking them. That process makes a herring turn red or dark brown—and gives them a very strong smell. Dogs love to sniff such smelly treats, a fact that makes the fish a perfect diversion for anyone trying to distract hunting dogs from the trail of their quarry. The practice of using preserved fish to confuse hunting dogs led to the use of the term red herring for anything that diverts attention from the issue at hand.
Examples of red herring in a Sentence
Tim Ringel, Forbes.com, 10 Apr. 2025
In the show, there are a lot of red herrings and moments where audiences are taken in so many directions.
—Lexy Perez, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 Mar. 2025
This intro slyly combines the butterflies of first-date jitters with setups for a number of potential culprits (and of course, red herrings) for when Violet is eventually tormented over the digital airwaves.
—Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 10 Mar. 2025
The script is by David Koepp (writer of the best Mission: Impossible, the 1996 Brian De Palma iteration), and it’s filled with shimmery red herrings and liberal lashings of phony-baloney techno-spy stuff.
—Stephanie Zacharek, TIME, 6 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for red herring
Cite this Entry
“Red herring.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/red%20herring. Accessed 21 Apr. 2025.
Copy Citation
Share