Bark up the wrong tree
(PW) make a wrong choice or a false assumption
If he thinks that I am going to help him paint his house, well he’s barking up the wrong tree.
(MW) to promote or follow a mistaken course (as in doing research)
(freedictionary)
Fig. to make the wrong choice; to ask the wrong person; to follow the wrong course. (Alludes to a dog in pursuit of an animal, where the animal is in one tree and the dog is barking at another tree.) If you think I'm the guilty person, you're barking up the wrong tree. The hitters blamed the team's bad record on the pitchers, but they were barking up the wrong tree.
(thePhraseFinder)
Meaning
Making a mistake or a false assumption in something you are trying to achieve.
Origin
The allusion is to hunting dogs barking at the bottom of trees where they mistakenly think their quarry is hiding.
The earliest known printed citation is inmJames Kirke Paulding's Westward Ho!, 1832:
"Here he made a note in his book, and I begun to smoke him for one of those fellows that drive a sort of a trade of making books about old Kentuck and the western country: so I thought I'd set him barking up the wrong tree a little, and I told him some stories that were enough to set the Mississippi a-fire; but he put them all down in his book."
The phrase must have caught on in the USA quickly after Hall's book. It appeared in several American newspapers throughout the 1830s. For example, this piece from the Gettysburg newspaper The Adams Sentinel, March 1834:
"Gineral you are barkin' up the wrong tree this time, for I jest see that rackoon jump to the next tree, and afore this he is a mile off in the woods.
(GoEnglish)
Barking Up The Wrong Tree ( looking for something in the wrong place ... )
When you are looking for something that is not where you are looking, you are "barking up the wrong tree." Example: "I know you think I stole your umbrella. But really, I don't have it. You are barking up the wrong tree."
You are like a dog that is barking up at a tree that has nothing in it. This may also mean trying to find the answer to some problem by using the wrong approach. Example: "I have been trying to solve this one problem for an hour. I really do not know how to do it." Reply: "Yes, I can see that. You've been barking up the wrong tree."
You are "barking up the wrong tree" when you are trying to find something, but you are looking in the wrong place.
