Puzzlebrains

There have been a few red herrings in the mags and I was just randomly thinking are herrings actually red and why are they called red herrings?

A 'red herring' is one which has been cured by salting and smoking, and it's actually a dark brown rather than red.

As for the misleading 'red herring', it goes back to the days of fox-hunting. When there weren't any real fox-trails to follow, they would get someone to drag a fish along the ground to provide a false trail for the dogs to follow. Sometimes people would deliberately sabotage a hunt by dragging a fish across a real trail.

As the herring family is Clupeidae, I used to refer to a red herring as Clupea rubidis over at DVP (I used Latin a lot there).

But interestingly, the word "herring" (according to my Dictionary of Word Origins) comes from:
"the grey fish". Old English hering goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic "kheringaz" in which the first syllable could represent the ancestor of the English hour "silvery grey" - the colour of the herring.

Bet you wish you hadn't asked now!!

I actually do latin at school but I feel very let down that the teacher hasn't told us important things like the word for types of fish.

The foxhunting idea sounds quite cunning thoguh:)

I did Latin for a year and all I can remember is my school motto:Esse Quam Videri which means "to be rather than to seem", which I suppose is fair enough. I do prefer the motto of my kids' school though "Rejoice in thy youth", which of course you never do when you are a youth but sort of wish you had when you're an old git.