As close as red HERRING in a barrel

Insights

Crushing Crowdedness

Describes people or things rammed together with no space to spare—carriages, halls, tenements—emphasizing physical press and discomfort.

Compact Efficiency

Praises space-saving order when goods are stowed snugly; ‘close’ connotes economical packing and neat provisioning.

Sealed Secrecy

Exploits the second sense of ‘close’—tight-lipped: information is kept ‘barrel-tight,’ with nothing leaking out.

Constraint and Conformity

Suggests a social squeeze where individuality is flattened to fit the container—institutions or fashions that press everyone into the same mold.

Inescapable Proximity

Signals forced togetherness—on ships, in barracks, in crisis lodging—where proximity breeds friction and shared fate alike.

Maritime–Market Roots

Red (i.e., smoked) herrings and pilchards were preserved and exported in barrels from early modern coasts; tight wedging kept goods stable, fresh(er), and countable.

Double Edge of ‘Close’

Early English ‘close’ means both ‘packed’ and ‘secretive.’ The proverb can toggle between spatial density and guarded silence, depending on context.

Not the Fallacy

Unlike the later rhetorical ‘red herring’ (a distraction), this image is literal and logistical; the shared phrase shows how trade terms can fork into divergent idioms.

Crowd as Barrel

Urban growth made streets and playhouses feel ‘barrelled’; the simile converts a commercial container into a social metaphor for crowding and pressure.

Economy of Scarcity

Where storage, transport, and rent are dear, cultures prize ‘closeness’; the saying normalizes compression as prudence—even as it hints at its human cost.

Rhetorical Devices

Simile

A plain ‘as X as Y’ comparison grounds an abstract degree (‘very tight’) in a concrete, sensory trade image.

Alliteration

Soft echoes in ‘herring’/‘barrel’ and the clipped k-sounds of ‘close’/‘as’ add oral snap, easing recall.

Concrete Imagery

Salt, smoke, wood-stave barrel, glossy fish—tactile details make the pressure feel palpable.

Meronymic Detail

Naming the specific fish (‘red herring’) heightens vividness and authenticity versus a generic ‘fish in a barrel.’

Elliptical Hyperbole

Implied extremity—‘so close nothing more could fit’—achieves emphasis without numerals or measures.