Red herring
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the idiom and the logical fallacy. For the type of preserved food, see
kipper. For other uses, see
Red herring (disambiguation).
"Herrings
kippered by smoking and salting until they turn reddish-brown, i.e. a "red herring". Prior to refrigeration kipper was known for being strongly
pungent. In 1807, William Cobbett wrote how he used red herrings to lay a false trail, while training
hunting dogs—an
apocryphal story that was probably the origin of the idiom.
A
red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue.
[1] It may be either a logical
fallacyor a
literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. A red herring might be intentionally used, such as in mystery fiction or as part of
rhetorical strategies (e.g. in politics), or it could be inadvertently used during argumentation.
The origin of the expression is not known.
Conventional wisdom has long supposed it to be the use of a
kipper (a strong-smelling smoked fish) to train hounds to follow a scent, or to divert them from the correct route when hunting; however, modern linguistic research suggests that the term was probably invented in 1807 by English polemicist
William Cobbett, referring to one occasion on which he had supposedly used a kipper to divert hounds from chasing a hare, and was never an actual practice of hunters. The phrase was later borrowed to provide a formal name for the logical fallacy and literary device."
I used this term in the post because it is the common tactic of people who cannot answer a question that may not support their predisposed position.
