Meaning
Pursuing an impossible or illusory goal, wasting effort on something that can never actually be reached. Usually said with sympathy or gentle criticism of someone's unrealistic ambitions; it can also be self-deprecating about one's own hopes. Informal to neutral register; gently dismissive of unrealistic hopes, though sometimes wistful rather than harsh. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The literal image is the rainbow's end or foot, which appears to touch the ground and to hide a crock of gold, yet recedes as you approach it. Word Histories documents this illusory-quest imagery in print from 1796, when a New York magazine likened overoptimistic philosophy to 'the fruitless chace of the peasant's boy after the glories of the rainbow's end', and traces British and American examples through the early 1800s, including an 1836 Sussex glossary recording the proverb 'Go to the end of the rainbow, and you'll find a crock of money'. The early texts speak of the rainbow's end and of boys running to catch it; the compact verbal phrase about chasing rainbows, now defined by Collins as wasting time trying to get something you can never have, is a later consolidation of that older imagery, and no source I found pins its first use.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- chase rainbows
- chase the rainbow
- chasing the rainbow
- go chasing rainbows
Usage Examples
- He spent five years and most of his savings chasing rainbows with that invention, refusing to hear a skeptical word.
- Critics accused the committee of chasing rainbows instead of funding repairs to the clinic roof.
- You cannot build a career on applause alone; that is just chasing the rainbow.