1346: wild goose chase Aug 18, 2018

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If one were to look up the etymology of the phrase "wild goose chase" by looking into the word 'goose', that would probably be a wild goose chase of its own. The term actually referred originally to a sport in which a line of horsemen would follow one rider, in a way that was thought to resemble a flock of geese—or other birds—that fly in a way to utilize wind-drag. Moreover, the 'wild' in question is a bastardization of the earlier 'wold', which referred to a type of woodland.
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