🗓️ Idiom: A Wild Goose Chase (n)
💬 Meaning
- A search or effort that is a complete waste of time.
- Chasing something that is very difficult or impossible to find or achieve.
🧠 Example Sentences
- The founder spent months looking for funding from the wrong investors—it was a wild goose chase.
- Trying to find the perfect all-in-one tool was a wild goose chase that delayed the launch.
- They went on a wild goose chase trying to locate a bug that didn’t actually exist.
🏛️ Origin
The idiom comes from 16th-century England and originally referred to a type of horse race where riders followed a lead horse in a specific pattern—like wild geese flying in formation. Over time, it came to mean a confusing or pointless pursuit.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
We spent an entire week trying to fix a problem that wasn’t real—it was a __________.
Answer
wild goose chase
2. Choose the correct meaning:
What does “a wild goose chase” mean in business?
A) A successful plan
B) A pointless effort
C) A group project
Answer
B) A pointless effort
3. Change the sentence using “a wild goose chase”:
“The team wasted days looking for a non-existent error in the code.”
Answer
The team went on a wild goose chase looking for a non-existent error in the code.
ℹ️ Other Useful Pages
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👉 Entrepreneur and Startup Idioms
👉 Business English Idioms List
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Rob is a CELTA qualified English teacher with 15 years of international experience. He has a BSc and PGDip from Loughborough and St Andrews universities in the UK. He has taught in Thailand and Saudi Arabia and now works with professionals worldwide.
