wild goose chase

/ˌwaɪld ˌɡuːs ˈtʃeɪs/

a hopeless pursuit

wild goose chase in a sentence

“Searching for the missing file was a wild goose chase.”

From Romeo and Juliet, originally a type of horse race

Related Words

salad days

a time of youth and inexperience

brave new world

an imagined future of progress or dystopia

Kafkaesque

nightmarishly complex and illogical

Orwellian

characterized by authoritarian control and propaganda

Machiavellian

cunning and unscrupulous in politics

quixotic

exceedingly idealistic and impractical