herring

[her-ing]

noun

plural

herring ,

plural

herrings .

1. an important food fish, Clupea harengus harengus, found in enormous shoals in the North Atlantic.

2. a similar fish, Clupea harengus pallasii, of the North Pacific.

3. any fish of the family Clupeidae, including herrings, shads, and sardines.

4. any of various fishes resembling the herring but of unrelated families.

herring

/ ˈhɛrɪŋ /

noun

1. any marine soft-finned teleost fish of the family Clupeidae, esp Clupea harengus, an important food fish of northern seas, having an elongated body covered, except in the head region, with large fragile silvery scales

Other Word Forms

• herringlike adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of herring¹

before 900; Middle English hering, Old English hǣring; cognate with German Häring

Word History and Origins

Origin of herring¹

Old English hǣring; related to Old High German hāring, Old Frisian hēring, Dutch haring

Idioms and Phrases

see dead as a doornail (herring); red herring.

Example Sentences

Annual surveys have begun to record steady increases in eider ducks, guillemots, herring gulls and lesser-backed gulls on and around the island, year on year.

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Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately dismissed the digital ID plan as a "distraction and a red herring", saying the scheme would not have stopped the criminal network uncovered by the BBC.

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Trumpian rhetoric relies on a rotating arsenal of cognitive traps: Whataboutism to deflect, false equivalence to confuse, red herrings to distract and gaslighting to exhaust.

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This subsidy thing is, again, a red herring.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Temple dismissed Landry’s measure as a “red herring,” that would—if anything—make the market worse by deterring insurers.

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