Chrysti The Wordsmith: Bark Up the Wrong Tree

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith. When someone tells you that you're barking up the wrong tree it's a way of saying that you're making a false assumption or you've been misled in your search for something. The idiom to bark up the wrong tree was inspired by the American sport of raccoon hunting and the animal doing the barking in this expression is not just any dog but a coon hound specially bred to track arboreal prey. Since raccoons are most active at night the hunt is a nocturnal activity. Coon hounds therefore rely less on their eyesight than on their accurate sense of smell and will bark excitedly at the base of a tree if they detect that a raccoon has ascended into its branches. When the Huns OK shaly misinterpret a scent they'll gather around a certain tree thinking they've cornered the kauri. In reality the raccoon sits in the branches of a neighboring tree or escapes safely into the night. Then the Huns are literally barking up the wrong tree. And it's what we

humans are said to do metaphorically when we look for something in the wrong place. American writer James Kirk Paulding was one of the first to print this expression in his novel Westward Ho and 1832 from the studios of famine the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. I'm Christie the wordsmith Brody Cates is studio engineer for the series and Dr. Phil Gaines is consulting editor could David divorce. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Pseud web dot com.