It’s a common ploy in marketing, politics, and from mystery writers: Toss out something distracting or even misleading to shift the audience’s focus from the main issue at hand. For instance, a governor might tout lower unemployment rates to draw attention away from a recent state tax hike. The distraction is known as a red herring. Mystery aficionados will also be familiar with this concept, as red herrings appear as plot devices in countless books and films, from the carefully planted red kimono in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express to the many circumstances distracting the audience from discovering that Teddy Daniels is actually a patient in Shutter Island. But how did a fish become a metaphor for distraction? The answer lies in centuries-old food practices and some gullible bloodhounds.
Herring is a silvery fish commonly salted and smoked for preservation, especially in the days before refrigeration. This process turns the fish red or brown. (White herring is salted, but not smoked.) While palatable for people to eat, smoked herring emits a strong odor — strong enough to throw hunting dogs off their trail. Reportedly, some 17th-century fugitives used these pungent fish to escape prison by leading bloodhounds astray.
Whether used as a part of a regular hunting practice or as a part of a prison break, “red herring” took on the figurative meaning of “something that distracts attention from the real issue” by the 19th century. According to British etymologist Michael Quinon, the earliest-cited metaphorical use is credited to journalist William Cobbett in 1807. Cobbett wrote a fictional story of a boy using a literal red herring to distract hounds pursuing a hare, and Cobbett used the anecdote as a metaphor to criticize the press. He asserted that reporters had been misled by false claims that Napoleon had been defeated, which diverted their attention from important domestic issues. Cobbett called this a “political red-herring” — similar to how the phrase is used today.
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