How did the phrase “caught red handed” originate?
Being caught red handed is to be caught in the act of doing something wrong, or immediately afterwards with evidence showing, so that denial is pointless. It’s based simply on the metaphor of a murderer being caught with blood still on their hands, and therefore would date back probably to the days even before guns, when to kill another person would have involved the use of a direct-contact weapon like a dagger or club. The red-handed image is straightforward enough to have evolved from common speech, that is to say, there’s unlikely to have been one single quote that originated the expression.
