Fig.: a hopeless and pointless quest

This is just a wild goose chase: this is Italy and we are never going to find a restaurant open for dinner at 5 p.m.

È un'impresa vana: siamo in Italia e non c'è verso di trovare un ristorante aperto per cena alle 5 del pomeriggio

“So, if we want to find this mysterious treasure, we must first solve the clues and then follow the old map we discovered step by step” “Assuming it's not a wild goose chase”

“E così, se vogliamo trovare questo fantomatico tesoro dobbiamo prima risolvere gli indizi e poi seguire passo passo la vecchia mappa che abbiamo trovato” “Sempre che non sia una caccia a un tesoro fantasma”

We are in the middle of nowhere and I think that looking for a fancy restaurant would be just a wild goose chase

Siamo finiti a casa del diavolo e pensare di trovare un ristorante carino è praticamente un'impresa senza speranza

In the Middle Ages, this name was given to a kind of chase in which all the horses had to follow a lead horse at a set distance – similar to the flight of wild geese in a V formation. The equine connection was referred to in Shakespeare and Nicholas Breton (1602), but that meaning had been lost by the 19th century. In Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811, he defines the term much the way we do today: "A tedious uncertain pursuit, like the following a flock of wild geese, who are remarkably shy." Our current use of the phrase, in fact, alludes to an undertaking which will probably prove to be fruitless