How to Use fishing expedition in a Sentence

fishing expedition

noun
  • Now that’s the sort of fly-fishing expedition that might send Logan to the bait shop.
    Scott Tobias, Vulture, 31 Oct. 2021
  • This is just a huge fishing expedition that the law doesn't allow.
    Ken Daley, NOLA.com, 12 Sep. 2017
  • Jen invites all the Housewives to an ice-fishing expedition at Echo Lake in Coalville.
    Scott D. Pierce, The Salt Lake Tribune, 27 Sep. 2021
  • Some courts have held that this kind of fishing expedition is analogous to the broad document requests in the Hubbell case.
    Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, 11 Aug. 2020
  • The Magnolia Network star, 45, shared a fun video of son Crew, 5, enjoying an indoor fishing expedition as the two try to beat the south's heat.
    Angela Andaloro, Peoplemag, 8 Aug. 2023
  • But first, was the raid on Trump's personal attorney just a proxy move by Mueller in his fishing expedition?
    Fox News, 14 Apr. 2018
  • The staff here is ready to do anything for guests, from looking after their pets to booking a clay shooting or fishing expedition.
    Alyson Krueger, Vogue, 27 Jan. 2018
  • To do this, a team in my lab went on a molecular fishing expedition inside human cells.
    Nevan Krogan, University Of California, Discover Magazine, 24 Mar. 2020
  • Prince: How is this germane to this fishing expedition?
    Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 8 Dec. 2017
  • For bigger marine thrills, a dolphin cruise yields sightings in the thousands, and a fishing expedition turns up sailfish the size of small children.
    Condé Nast Traveler, 28 Dec. 2021
  • Episode 4 picks up where Episode 3 left off, with Lisa trying to broker peace between her two friends during an ice fishing expedition at Echo Lake.
    Scott D. Pierce, The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 Oct. 2021
  • But there's a little extra drama that did not make the episode, revolving around what should have been a simple fishing expedition.
    Dalton Ross, EW.com, 20 Oct. 2022
  • The evaluation is a kind of fishing expedition, in which doctors thread an array of electrodes into the brain and wait for seizures to occur to see whether surgery might prevent them.
    Benedict Carey, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2018
  • Not content to keep the bafflement in-house, or perhaps as a fishing expedition, the folks at NASA presented the photo to the space-curious public.
    Author: Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Anchorage Daily News, 24 Apr. 2018
  • The father of three hasn’t been seen since going on a regular morning fishing expedition.
    Alastair Jamieson, NBC News, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Any fears of a fishing expedition can be assuaged by search protections already baked into the laws, Wexler told The Chronicle.
    Megan Cassidy, SFChronicle.com, 21 Jan. 2020
  • Candela wants to make your next fishing expedition smoother and more sustainable.
    Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 4 Apr. 2023
  • The retired schoolteacher opened a cooler full of shrimp from an acquaintance who went on a fishing expedition 130 miles south in a river that empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
    Star Tribune, 21 Oct. 2020
  • People of the Jomon culture likely hunted and fished to survive, and Tsukumo No. 24 may have perished during such a fishing expedition.
    Isis Davis-Marks, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 June 2021
  • Criminologists and civil rights lawyers have panned the tactic as a fishing expedition rife with racial bias that yields few results.
    NBC News, 7 Oct. 2021
  • There is still today at the end of the day no corroboration and you just don't open an FBI investigation as a fishing expedition to try and find something that doesn't exist.
    Fox News, 28 Sep. 2018
  • Michelson said the question was irrelevant to the case, and instructed Paterson to be more precise, rather than go off on fishing expeditions.
    Joe Guillen, Detroit Free Press, 14 May 2018
  • The scientists’ Galileo Project will be a $1.6 million fishing expedition unlike any other.
    Ashley Stimpson, Popular Mechanics, 18 Aug. 2022
  • The search warrant is nothing more than the kind of unreasonable and oppressive 'fishing expedition' the Kentucky Supreme Court has forbidden.
    Matthew Glowicki, The Courier-Journal, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Data mining, fishing expeditions and data dredging are other descriptors that had been applied to the act of p-hacking.
    Wired, 26 Nov. 2019
  • This sophomore effort flashes back and forth between the springtime unfurling of Mungo and James’ love (forged in the dovecote where James raises pigeons) and the goose-pimpling fishing expedition a few months later.
    Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2022
  • But until the systems improve, Nakashook has a new strategy for planning his weekend hunting and fishing expeditions.
    Bypaul Voosen, science.org, 8 Mar. 2023
  • In addition to sightseeing cruises along the Nidelva River, Trondheim by Boat offers 90-minute sunset tours of the fjord as well as fishing expeditions, with gear and lessons included.
    Peter Terzian, Travel + Leisure, 5 Mar. 2023
  • So committed is Trump to this fishing expedition that more resources are being poured into these activities even as the State Department as a whole faces massive cuts.
    Jeet Heer, New Republic, 30 Oct. 2017
  • In essence, the investigation was a fishing expedition, in which Weinberg posed as the representative of a wealthy, unscrupulous sheikh aiming to do business in the United States.
    Harrison Smith, latimes.com, 9 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fishing expedition.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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