barking up the wrong tree
- 1Present participle and gerund of bark up the wrong tree.
By blaming the new software for the outage, the manager was barking up the wrong tree.
Investigators eventually admitted they had been barking up the wrong tree for months.
Note
Two jobs share this -ing form. After a form of be it builds the progressive, the usual way of admitting a mistake still under way: we have been barking up the wrong tree. Without be it works as a noun, as in barking up the wrong tree cost us a week. Only bark inflects. Up the wrong tree is frozen, so the tree stays singular and keeps its article.
Barking up the wrong tree cost the team a whole week.
She was tired of barking up the wrong tree with every new theory.
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