wild-goose chase
Pluralwild-goose chases
- 1A futile search or fruitless errand; also, a useless, often long task far more complicated than its result is worth.
The anonymous tip sent detectives on a wild-goose chase across three counties.
Getting a refund through the airline's phone menu turned into a two-week wild-goose chase.
Note
The phrase began on horseback: in a 16th-century race, every rider had to follow the lead horse's erratic course, as wild geese follow their leader, and Gervase Markham mentions it in a 1593 book on horsemanship. Today one goes on, is sent on or embarks upon a wild-goose chase, as a skeptic in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) believes the whole expedition has.
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Origin
Early recorded uses refer to a 16th-century horse race in which every rider had to follow the erratic course of the lead horse, as wild geese follow their leader in formation. It is mentioned in 1593 in Gervase Markham's book on horsemanship, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, scene 4), where Mercutio says "if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done", and in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).