Red Handed

[Biccylova]

where does the saying "caught red handed" come from? why red and not some other colour?

[Jackdaw33]

Blood on one's hands.

[gulliver1]

Basher al - Assad ???.

[Baldric]

To be taken with red hand in ancient times was to be caught in the act, like a murderer with his hands red with his victim's blood. The use of red hand in this sense goes back to 15th-century Scotland and Scottish law. Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819) contains the first recorded use of taken red-handed for someone apprehended in the act of committing a crime. The expression subsequently became more common as caught red-handed

[Jackdaw33]

Simply if someone was caught with blood still on his hands there was a presumption of guilt. Now it has come to mean caught in the act.

[Biccylova]

Thanks, that's cleared up that little mystery.