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A fruitless, hopeless, or prolonged pursuit of something unobtainable or nonexistent.
"Following those obscure forum clues sent the investigators on a wild goose chase across the city."
"We spent three hours on a wild goose chase looking for a vintage store that had closed years ago."
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Employs animal behavior or imagery ('goose') to express figurative human conduct.
First coined by William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet (1595), referencing a competitive horse race where riders mimicked the erratic formation flight of wild geese.
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