Red herring
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The phrase red herring has a number of specific metaphorical meanings, all sharing a general concept: something being a diversion or distraction from the original objective. These include:
- a type of logical fallacy in which one purports to prove one's point by means of irrelevant arguments (see Ignoratio elenchi).
- in literature, a plot device intended to distract the reader from a more important event in the plot, usually a twist ending. Most often, a red herring takes the form of a character.
- in detective work, mystery fiction, and puzzle-solving, a trick which leads investigators, readers, or solvers towards an incorrect solution.
- in adventure games, an item or object of no practical use; its purpose may be to frustrate the player who tries to find the intended use for it.
- in finance, a red herring is a preliminary prospectus for a debt or equity offering that lists everything except the price and size of the offering.
- in academic examinations, particularly in mathematics and physical sciences, provided information that is useless to solve a given problem.
The etymology of the phrase may be the practice of saving a hunted fox by dragging a smoked herring across its trail - creating a new, useless scent trail. When smoked, herring turns bright red and is quite odoriferous. The latter trait made it possible to deliberately leave a strong trail on the ground to facilitate training hounds to track a scent. Having been so trained, hounds would readily follow the scent of the fish over that of the fox, allowing their quarry to escape. In this context the Oxford English Dictionary records its first written use occurring in 1686 "To draw a red herring across the track". There are however doubts regarding the attribution of the metaphor, as standard practice may have used a herring for training only as a last resort, preferring an actual fox for obvious reasons.[1] It's also possible that the phrase "red herring" came into use simply because its appearance and smell are particularly distracting to people in eating situations, an explanation which accounts for its appearance as well as its smell. There also is a nursery rhyme, 'The Man in the Wilderness', in which a man answers the question of how many strawberries grew in the sea with 'As many as red herrings grew in the wood'.
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[edit] Cultural references
- In the animated series A Pup Named Scooby Doo, there was a bully character named Red Herring that Fred Jones insisted was behind every crime. This was an in-joke about the fact that on the original TV series, Fred would always fall for the red herring trick. Herring would show up after his accusation to prove that he wasn't involved, although he actually was the criminal in one case (ironically, Fred was struggling the whole episode to not blame him).
- In the Duckman episode "Days of Whining and Neurosis," there was a detective named Red Herring, an employee of "MacGuff Security," who literally is a red herring in the plot.
- In the murder mystery movie Clue (1985), the phrase "Communism is just a red herring" appears several times as it is learned that frequent allusions to communist ties throughout the movie were disconnected from the actual motives for the murders.
- The novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown features a character named Bishop Aringarosa. He functions as a red herring in the plot and his name in fact means "red herring" in Italian.
- Five Red Herrings is the title of a detective novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. In it six persons are accused of murder while only one of them has committed the crime. The other five are red herrings who impair the solving of the case.
[edit] In computer and video games
- Infocom's Deadline features a character who spends much of the morning eating red herrings while important events transpire elsewhere.
- Beyond Zork's supplementary work "The Lore and Legends of Quendor" features clue-laden descriptions of several creatures, all of which appear in-game except for the red herring.
- In The Secret Of Monkey Island a red herring is ironically a key item for progression in the game; it must be given to a Troll who asks 'something not really important'
- In Simon the Sorcerer 2, Simon makes a comment about a carriage that he always thought herrings would be fishes.
- In the detective mystery Tex Murphy, the title character gets clues about an individual. When he finally meets him, he is seen eating a red herring and says nothing essential about Tex's investigation.
- In Sanitarium, literal red herrings are used on two occasions as comic relief in an otherwise very serious and disturbing game. The first is a shed with a red herring painted on its roof which contains nothing useful. The second is an Aztec "ruby fish" idol which can be picked up and carried but is never useful in the game.
- In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, a Yakuza-like group appears called "Red Nishin", who are not important to the plot; "nishin" means "herring" in Japanese.
- In "Star Flight", the planet rover that picks up resources and relics could not pick up a relic called "Red Herring" because it was .1 higher than the weight limit.
- In the 1983 C64 adventure game The treasures of the aztec tomb the player can find an actual red herring, which is totally useless, occupies one slot of the limited inventory space, and can not be dropped. It can be eaten by the player, but because it's so salty it makes the player thirsty, leading to a rather annoying "you are thirsty." message appearing on every screen.[citation needed]
- The Sega Genesis/Amiga game The Killing Game Show (also released as Fatal Rewind) includes a red herring power-up, which does nothing when activated.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Quinion, Michael (2002). The Lure of the Red Herring. WorldWideWords. Retrieved on February 20, 2006.
