Īnd check out our books about the English language.A hypothetical 400-page bill is brought forward in Congress, and voting on the bill is expected to happen in only one hour. Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And both of those verbs may share a French ancestor, rifler (to scratch or to plunder). However, the noun is derived from another verb “rifle” (to cut spiral grooves inside the barrel of a firearm). You didn’t mention the felonious implications of the verb “rifle” in your question, but we should note that all six of the standard dictionaries we’ve consulted mention stealing as the goal of rifling.įinally, the noun “rifle” (the firearm) doesn’t come from the verb “rifle” (to search for loot). Riffle: “Turn over something, especially the pages of a book, quickly and casually: ‘he riffled through the pages.’ ” Rifle: “Search through something in a hurried way in order to find or steal something: ‘she rifled through the cassette tapes.’ ” Here’s a more recent example, minus the gold, from Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000): “Most magazine editors can tell how long a story is just by looking at the print and riffling the pages.”Īs for the use of the verbs “rifle” and “riffle” today, here are the relevant definitions from Oxford Dictionaries online (a different entity from the OED): The earliest citation is from Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopedia (1878): “Every three minutes the book is taken out of its covers and ‘riffled.’ Riffling consists in shaking up the leaves, so as to loosen the whole and prevent the gold from clinging to the parchment.” ![]() In the 19th century, the OED says, “riffle” took on the sense you’re asking about: “To flick through (papers, books, etc.) to thumb (a block of paper, a book, etc.), releasing the leaves in (usually rapid) succession.” In the dictionary’s earliest citation, from a poem in a 1713 issue of the Monitor, a storm does its damage at sea: “A sudden Storm descends, / That, in an Instant, riffles all the Boat, / Whose scatter’d Streamers on the Billows float.” Oxford says it’s of unknown origin, but may be a variant or alteration of the verbs “rifle,” “ruffle,” or “ripple.” (Remember, the French sources of “rifle” meant to scratch or scrape, as well as to plunder.) When the verb “riffle” showed up in the 18th century, it referred to storm damage, specifically the stripping of slate, tiles, and other roof coverings. Piers Plowman is also the source of this OED citation: “What wey ich wynde ful wel he aspieþ, / To robbe me and to ryfle me” (“He clearly discovers which path I take, / To rob me and to rifle me”). 1378), an allegorical poem by William Langland: “I roos whan þei were areste and riflede hire males” (“I rose when they were at rest and rifled their bags”). ![]() The first example cited is from Confessio Amantis (circa 1391), a Middle English poem by John Gower: “He ruyfleþ bothe book and belle.”Īnd here’s an example from Piers Plowman (c. When the verb entered English in the late 1300s, it meant to carry off as booty, to plunder or rob, to ransack or search a receptacle for valuables to steal, and several other felonious actions, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. English borrowed it in the 14th century from Anglo-Norman and Old French, where rifler meant to scratch, scrape, graze, or plunder. The verb “rifle” is by far the older of the two terms. (“Rifle” here is pronounced, as you say, like the firearm, while “riffle” rhymes with “piffle.”) ![]() Are these still two distinct terms?Ī: Yes, the verbs “rifle” and “riffle” are still two distinct terms, but they overlap somewhat, and it’s not surprising that some people confuse them.īoth verbs can refer to searching, but “rifle” suggests a search for something to steal, while “riffle” means flipping through pages, perhaps searching for something and perhaps not. I’d use “rifle” (pronounced like the weapon) for searching through a box for something, and riffle” (to my mind, beautifully onomatopoeic) for going through papers. Q: I’m seeing the verbs “rifle” and “riffle” used interchangeably.
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