red herring
Sign in to savefalse clue that misleads or distracts attention away from a relevant or important question
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- trope
- Subclass of
- irrelevant conclusion
- Image
- A Study in Scarlet Friston 01.jpg
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- different from
- fog bell
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Encyclopedic overview
In the mystery novel A Study in Scarlet, the detective Sherlock Holmes examines a clue which is later revealed to be intentionally misleading.
A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentionally, as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies (e.g., in politics), or may be used in argumentation inadvertently.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “red herring” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.