Barking Up the Wrong Tree: meaning & origin (1832)

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

To pursue a mistaken line of thought or action; to direct one's effort, suspicion, or energy at the wrong target.

“The auditors spent a week on the travel expenses, but the fraud was in payroll all along -- they were barking up the wrong tree.”

First recorded 1832 · James Kirke Paulding, Westward Ho! (New York, 1832), vol. I ↓

The popular story

The usual account is that the phrase comes straight from the American backwoods, where hunters used hounds to chase raccoons, opossums, and other game up trees. When a dog corners its quarry, it stands at the foot of the tree and bays loudly to summon the hunter. A clever raccoon, though, can leap to a neighbouring tree or double back, leaving the dog baying furiously at an empty trunk — barking up the wrong tree. The image is of misplaced, confident effort aimed at the wrong target.

What the record shows

Unusually for an idiom, the popular story holds up. The earliest printed use found by lexicographers is from 1832, in James Kirke Paulding’s novel Westward Ho!, in the voice of a Kentucky frontiersman: ‘so I thought I’d set him barking up the wrong tree a little.’ The very next year, Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee (1833) makes the hunting picture explicit, comparing a political opponent to ‘an old coon dog, barking up the wrong tree.’ Across the mid-1830s the phrase turns up repeatedly in American newspapers and in frontier writers such as James Hall and Albert Pike.

The verdict

Attested. The phrase is genuinely first recorded in 1832, it is unambiguously American frontier slang, and the coon-hunting origin is supported by the earliest sources themselves — the 1833 Crockett quote literally names a ‘coon dog.’ There is no rival etymology and no folk myth to debunk here; the everyday explanation and the documentary trail point the same way.

What we don’t know

We cannot date the spoken phrase precisely. In Paulding’s 1832 text it already reads as established slang, so it was almost certainly circulating in speech in the 1820s or earlier. We also cannot credit any single coiner: it emerged from a hunting culture, not from one writer. Claims that Davy Crockett originated it are unfounded — the 1833 book is a third-party anecdote collection, and Paulding beat it into print by a year.

How it changed

Early forms were flexible (‘set him barking up the wrong tree,’ ‘an old coon dog barking up the wrong tree’), but the phrase quickly standardised to the fixed idiom we use now. As raccoon hunting faded from everyday life, the literal picture receded and the figurative sense — pursuing the wrong idea, suspecting the wrong person, or applying effort in the wrong place — took over completely. It spread from American English into general worldwide use during the later 19th and 20th centuries.

Usage today

Today it is a common, informal idiom for a mistaken line of pursuit: ‘If you think I broke it, you’re barking up the wrong tree.’ It is especially frequent around investigations, arguments, blame, and problem-solving, where someone has aimed their energy or accusations at the wrong target. It carries a mild, almost sympathetic tone — the effort is real, just misdirected.

Common questions

When was 'barking up the wrong tree' first recorded?

The earliest known printed use is 1832, in James Kirke Paulding's novel Westward Ho!, where a frontier narrator says he 'set him barking up the wrong tree a little.' The phrase reads as already-current slang there, so its spoken use is likely a little older.

Does it really come from hunting dogs?

Yes -- and this is one of the better-documented idiom origins. It comes from American coon and game hunting, where hounds tree their quarry and bark at the base until the hunter arrives. If the animal has already escaped to another tree, the dog bays at the wrong one. The 1833 Crockett Sketches spell it out with 'an old coon dog, barking up the wrong tree.'

Is it American or British in origin?

American. All the earliest citations are from 1830s United States frontier and western writing (Paulding, the Crockett sketches, James Hall, Albert Pike). It later crossed into general English worldwide.

Did Davy Crockett invent the phrase?

No. The phrase appears in a Crockett anecdote from 1833, but Paulding used it in print in 1832, and the 1833 book is a third-party 'sketches' collection, not Crockett's own coinage. The expression was frontier common stock, not one person's invention.