fishing expedition

1. 1.

   an investigation undertaken in the hope (but not the stated purpose) of discovering information

   Broaderprobe

Questions about fishing expedition

What does fishing expedition mean?

fishing expedition means "an investigation undertaken in the hope (but not the stated purpose) of discovering information".

Is fishing expedition a common word?

fishing expedition is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.