a wild or absurd search for something nonexistent or unobtainable:
a wild-goose chase looking for a building long demolished.
2.
any senseless pursuit of an object or end; a hopeless enterprise:
Her scheme of being a movie star is a wild-goose chase.
Origin
1585-95
British Dictionary definitions for wild goose chase
wild-goose chase
noun
1.
an absurd or hopeless pursuit, as of something unattainable
Word Origin and History for wild goose chase
n.
1592, first attested in "Romeo and Juliet," where it evidently is a figurative use of an earlier (but unrecorded) literal sense in reference to a kind of follow-the-leader steeplechase.
Idioms and Phrases with wild goose chase
wild goose chase
A futile search or pursuit, as in I think she sent us on a wild goose chase looking for their beach house. This idiom originally referred to a form of 16th-century horseracing requiring riders to follow a leader in a particular formation (presumably resembling a flock of geese in flight). Its figurative use dates from about 1600.