riflenoun/ˈɹaɪfəl/

• 1

  engineeringgovernmentmilitaryA firearm fired from the shoulder; improved range and accuracy is provided by a long, rifled barrel.

  • Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amid the cane, and the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride.
  • In the June days of 1848 Baudelaire reports seeing revolutionaries (he might have been one of them) going through the streets of Paris with rifles, shooting all the clocks.
• 2

  datedgovernmentmilitarypoliticsA rifleman.

• 3

  engineeringgovernmentmilitaryAn artillery piece with a rifled barrel.

• 4

  A strip of wood covered with emery or a similar material, used for sharpening scythes.

rifleverb/ˈɹaɪfəl/

• 1

  To quickly search through many items (such as papers, the contents of a drawer, a pile of clothing).

  • Near-synonym: riffle
  • She made a mess when she rifled through the stack of papers, looking for the title document.
• 2

  To commit robbery or theft.

  • Thither repair at accustomed times their harlots […] not with empty hands, for they be as skilful in picking, rifling, and filching as the upright men.
• 3

  To search with intent to steal.

  • thine enemies […]shall ransack and rifle all the things of Edom; and shall search out all thy hidden commodities, and carry them away at once
• 4

  To strip of goods; to rob; to pillage.

  • Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye: / If not, we'll make you sit and rifle you.
  • Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island, had found the skeleton — it was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he had dug it up […]
• 5

  To seize and bear away by force; to snatch away; to carry off.

  • Time shall rifle every youthful grace.
• 6

  To add a spiral groove to a gun bore to make a fired bullet spin in flight in order to improve range and accuracy.

• 7

  To cause (a projectile, as a rifle bullet) to travel in a flat ballistic trajectory.

  • Davies's cross was headed away from danger by Robert Huth, only for Baird to take the ball in his stride and rifle his right-footed effort towards the corner from the edge of the box.
  • 2011 Fighting for Gold: The Story of Canada's Sledge Hockey Paralympic Gold by Lorna Schultz Schultz Nicholson But a Norwegian player rifled off a point shot that sailed into the back of the net.
• 8

  To move in a flat ballistic trajectory (as a rifle bullet).

  • The ball rifled off the bat.