an unimportant fact, idea, event, etc. that takes people's attention away from the important ones:
He deliberately threw a red herring into the conversation.
ORIGIN From the custom of using the scent of a smoked, dried herring (which was red) to train dogs to hunt.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of red herring come from?
This entry for red herring is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is red herring a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, red herring is tagged as noun.
Does red herring appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — red herring appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
