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wild-goose chase

noun

Etymology

Early recorded use refers to a type of 16th century horse race where everyone had to try to follow the erratic course of the lead horse, like wild geese have to follow their leader in formation. Mentioned in 1593 in the English poet Gervase Markham’s book about horsemanship. Also mentioned in the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 4 by the character Mercutio: “Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five.” Mentioned in Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Common use in the current may be the origin for the sport sense.

  1. derived from poet Gervase Markham’s book about horsemanship

Definitions

  1. A futile search, a fruitless errand

    A futile search, a fruitless errand; a useless and often lengthy task whose execution is inordinately complex relative to the value of the outcome.

    • I went on a wild-goose chase all over the town looking for that adapter until I discovered they no longer make them.
    • Diagnosing this software application's problems is a wild-goose chase because it is built in an environment that has poor debugging tools.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for wild-goose chase. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA