red herring

1. 1.

   any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue

   Broaderdiversion
2. 2.

   a dried and smoked herring having a reddish color

   Synonymssmoked herring

   Broaderherring
3. 3.

   a first draft of a prospectus; must be clearly marked to indicate that parts may be changed in the final prospectus

   “because some portions of the cover page are printed in red ink a preliminary prospectus is sometimes called a red herring”

   Synonymspreliminary prospectus

   Broadercourse catalog

Questions about red herring

What does red herring mean?

red herring means "any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for red herring?

Close synonyms include smoked herring, preliminary prospectus. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is red herring a common word?

red herring is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.