LEARNING ABOUT THE RED HERRING

Source: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/words-and-their-stories-smelly-fish/3703914.html

How Can a Smelly Fish Help You Avoid the Truth?

German chancellor Angela Merkel eats a pickled herring during a ceremony for a fishing boat, 2015. (AFP Photo)

Today, we talk about a small, silvery fish, called herring.

In some places, herring is a popular food. In the United States, herring is also part of a curious expression. We call unimportant information that is used to distract a “red herring.”

For example, mystery writers often use red herrings as plot devices. In her book “The Sittaford Mystery,” writer Agatha Christie gives many characters a reason for killing the rich Captain Trevelyan. But those reasons turn out to be red herrings. Christie uses them to throw the reader off the scent of the real killer.

In a mystery, a red herring is something the writer presents as a clue, but actually isn’t. Mysteries aren’t the only places that use red herrings.

People who work in government or write about politics also commonly use this expression. Politicians are sometimes guilty of drawing people’s attention away from serious issues by throwing out red herrings that they know will get a reaction.

People also criticize the media for creating red herrings – reports that are used to purposefully distract readers from more important issues.

As you can see, the expression red herring is useful … but it is odd. How did herring turn red? And why does it mean something that is purposefully misleading?

The first part, about the color, is easy to answer.

Before modern transportation and cooling equipment, fish was difficult to ship to customers. It would go bad before reaching stores. So, people began curing fish for later use. They added salt to the fish or left it hanging in a smoky room. After this process, the fish skin would darken, changing to a reddish-brown color. In this way, some herring literally turned red.

In our examples today, however, a “red herring” means something that takes attention away from the real issue. How did it come to mean that? Well, language experts do not really agree.

Some word historians point out that these smoked fish have a very strong smell. So, they might have been used to train hunting and tracking dogs. They suggest the scent of red herring could trick a group of hunters and, more importantly, their dogs. In other words, red herring could throw even the best hunting dogs off track, making them likely to go in the wrong direction.

However, to other language experts, this explanation makes no sense. It suggests that people were following the hunters, secretly plotting to ruin their day. Who would do that? More importantly, there doesn’t seem to be any written evidence to support that claim.

So, there are things we don’t know about the origin of “red herring.” But we do know this. From politics to the news to mysteries, we commonly use “red herring” in written English. But it can sound more formal and even a bit dated in everyday conversations.

There are some words that mean about the same thing but that are more commonly used in spoken English -- words like ploy, a ruse or subterfuge.

They all mean to trick someone or to send someone up the garden path, whether in search of stinky fish or anything else that is not the truth.