Idiom meaning, usage examples, facts

1. First my cousin told me I could buy what I needed at one store; then she sent me to three more. I never did find it. She sent me on a wild-goose chase.
2. Tom went all over town from one office to another trying to find out how he could apply to change his citizenship. At the end of the day, he was no closer to finding out, and he had been on a wild-goose chase.

This expression is first recorded in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet , and at that time actually referred to horse racing, not birds as the as the phrase might imply. In horse racing a wild-goose chase was a type of racing where the horses run in a V-like formation, similar to the way birds fly. Later, the connection to horse racing was lost in use, and people assumed the phrase came from flying geese.