a fishing expedition

(mainly American)

an attempt to discover the facts about something by collecting a lot of information, often secretly The investigators' request for the company's accounts is simply a fishing expedition - they have no real evidence of wrongdoing.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Paschalis	-	Late Roman
Zakiah	-	Arabic
Miracle	MIR-ə-kəl	English (Modern)
Nikkole	ni-KOL	English (Rare)
Blerta	BLER-tah	Albanian
Federico	fe-dhe-REE-ko (Spanish), fe-de-REE-ko (Italian)	Spanish, Italian