Word.ws English Dictionary

wild goose chase

wild goose chase is the alternative form of wild-goose chase.

Meaning of wild-goose chase

Noun

wild-goose chase (plural wild-goose chases)

  1. (figuratively, idiomatic) 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.

Forms of wild goose chase

pluralwild goose chases

Questions about wild goose chase

What is wild goose chase the alternative form of?
Wild goose chase is the alternative form of wild-goose chase.

Words near wild goose chase in the dictionary

  1. wild ginger
  2. wild gingers
  3. wild goat
  4. wild goats
  5. wild goose
  6. wild goose chase
  7. wild goose chases
  8. wild guess
  9. wild guesses
  10. wild haggis
  11. wild haggises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wild goose chase (page history and authors); wild-goose chase (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “wild goose chase.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wild_goose_chase. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.