Barking Up the Wrong Tree (A Popular English Idiom) | Learn American English in 1 Minute a Day

Barking up the wrong tree is a common idiom in English. It means to blame the wrong person for something bad. Watch the video to find out all the details about it! Barking up the wrong tree meaning: Blaming the wrong person. Barking up the wrong tree origin: It's from the 1800s in the USA, where hunting dogs would bark at the base of a tree when they thought a wild animal like a raccoon was in it so that their owners could shoot it. But, the wild animal had sometimes had already escaped which left the dogs barking at the wrong tree. Barking up the wrong tree examples: "You're barking up the wrong tree here. Jeremiah broke your phone, not me." "My mom is always barking up the wrong tree and blaming me for stuff that my brother does." ----------------------------------------------- Check out another popular idiom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCF1CtacWvE ---------------------------------------------- Want to find out more? Check out: https://eslspeaking.org/american-english-idioms/ The Big Book of American Idioms: https://amzn.to/3o6YxZi https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ #learningenglishwithjackie #idiom #idiomsandphrases #englishidioms #learnenglish ------------------------------------------- Learn English here: https://eslspeaking.org/category/learn-english/ -------------------------------------------- More idioms from @Learn English with EnglishClass101.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix_di_rrQ4I ------------------------------------------- Transcript: Hi everybody, this is Jackie from eslspeaking.org. So today's idiom is, barking up the wrong tree. This comes from hunting when hunting dogs were used. The dogs would run around, looking for animals in trees and they would bark at the bottom of the tree so their owners could shoot the anima,l the bird, the raccoon, or whatever was in the tree. But sometimes, the dogs were wrong. They were barking at a tree but there were actually no animals in that tree. So what this means is you blame someone for something but it's not their fault. For example, two children and maybe something is broken and the dad says, "Hey you broke that thing" And this kid says, "You're barking up the wrong tree. It was my brother." So you're blaming him, but he didn't do it. It was actually his brother so his dad is barking up the wrong tree.