Word Confusion: Riffle versus Rifle

Posted August 8, 2019 by kddidit in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
22 Dec 2022

This word confusion of riffle versus rifle in terms of a search has always bugged me.

Riffle and rifle both involve a search, but there’s a difference of intent. The first, riffle, is a look through, flipping through something. In considering that the synonyms include ruffle and shuffle, riffle is definitely more of a “friendly” look-see.

When you consider that one of the definitions of rifle involves theft, it makes sense that rifle is more of a criminal act or search to cause harm or raise alarm. I particularly liked one example from Aces, the society for editing, that copyeditors are likely to rifle through a reference work “to verify a fact or find an earlier use of a word or phrase in order to impose consistency on the text” (Hollandbeck).

My frustration with this is on a line with my annoyance over the usage issues with “Ravage versus Ravish“.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Riffle Rifle

Close-up of a riffle shuffle being performed during a game of poker at a bar near Madison, Wisconsin

Riffle Shuffle by Johnny Blood is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.


A sepia-toned photograph of a desk that's been searched

Home Ransacked by the East Area Rapist is courtesy of the FBI and is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

A vanity rifled by a criminal.

Part of Grammar:
Noun;
Verb, intransitive & transitive

Plural for the noun: riffles
Gerund: riffling

Third person present verb: riffles
Past tense or past participle: riffled
Present participle: riffling

Noun 1;
Verb, intransitive 2 & transitive 1, 2, 3

Plural for the noun: rifles
Gerund: rifling

Third person present verb: rifles
Past tense or past participle: rifled
Present participle: rifling

Noun:
[Usually in singular] A quick or casual leaf or search through something

  • The rustle of paper being leafed through
  • A shuffle performed by by flicking up and releasing the corners or sides of two piles of cards so that they intermingle and may be slid together to form a single pile playing cards

[Chiefly North American] A rocky or shallow part of a stream or river with rough water

  • A patch of waves or ripples, as upon the surface of water
  • A rapid, as in a stream

[Mining] The lining of transverse bars or slats on the bed of a sluice, arranged so as to catch heavy minerals, as gold or platinum

A hopper for distributing bulk material

Verb, intransitive:
Turn over something, especially the pages of a book, quickly and casually

  • [riffle through] Search quickly through (something), especially so as to cause disorder

Verb, transitive:
Turn over something, especially the pages of a book, quickly and casually

  • Disturb the surface of
  • Ruffle
  • [Cards] Shuffle playing cards by flicking up and releasing the corners or sides of two piles of cards so that they intermingle and may be slid together to form a single pile
Noun:
[Firearms, Gunnery, Ordnance, & Artillery] A gun, especially one fired from shoulder level, having a long spirally grooved barrel intended to make a bullet spin and thereby have greater accuracy over a long distance 1

  • [Firearms, etc.] One of the grooves
  • [Firearms, etc.] A cannon with such grooves
  • [Military; always plural; capitalize when part of a name] A unit of soldiers equipped with rifles

Verb, intransitive:
Search through something in a hurried way in order to find or steal something 2

Verb, transitive:
[Firearms, Gunnery, Ordnance, & Artillery; usually as adjective rifled] Make spiral grooves in a pipe, gun or its barrel or bore to make a bullet spin and thereby have greater accuracy over a long distance 1

Steal 2

  • To ransack and rob a place, receptacle, etc.
  • To search and rob a person
  • To plunder or strip bare
  • To steal or take away

[Adverbial of direction] Hit, throw, or kick (a ball or puck) hard and straight 3

Examples:
Noun:
I just want a quick riffle through the books.

The loudest sound was the constant riffle of paper as people looked at the agendas.

Faintly, though not frequently, a riffle of doubt perturbs Krugman’s chipmunk paeans to the Clinton Age.

The river’s sweeping riffles and deep pools provide a superb habitat for salmon.

With Mr Chambers by my side, seemingly unaware of the ordeal ahead, we parked the car and stared out over the arctic water — a slate-grey roiling torrent — without a hint of the alluring eddies and riffles of summer.

I peered across the chops and riffles and saw the dark backs and tails of a seething school of redfish.

“To recover finer gold more efficiently, it is necessary to direct finer-sized materials into more-shallow riffles” (McCracken).

The easiest way to divide bulk materials is to use a riffle sample splitter.

There’s actually a formula for riffle shuffling using the Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model (Assaf).

To keep games moving along at a brisk pace, blackjack dealers don’t always take the time to perform the seven riffle shuffles necessary to achieve an adequate level of mixing.

Verb, intransitive:
He riffled through the pages.

She riffled through her leather handbag.

She riffled through a stack of letters from Eva.

I’d sit down with Rick or Barry and make them riffle through the book of their choice.

Verb, transitive:
She opened a book with her thumbnail and riffled the pages.

He hesitated for a brief moment, then picked up his address book and, riffling worn pages, looked up the numbers of his teammates.

There was a slight breeze that riffled her hair.

He riffled the deck of cards.

He was walking that day, head down, abstracted in his notecards, noticing neither the fineness of the weather, the unevenness of the pavement, or the breeze riffling the surface of the river beneath the bridge.

Down below, tiny fiddler crabs raced along the mud, the males each waving an oversized pincer as minnows and larger fish riffled the water’s surface.

Noun:
Several Kalashnikov assault rifles were found at the scene.

The new Remington 710 is a moderately priced, entry-level, bolt-action hunting rifle.

Imagine firing a high-powered rifle in a mountainous area; people within five kilometers of the shot would hear it.

Prussian military rifles first mounted sword bayonets in 1787, and the armies of most other countries followed suit over the following 30 or 40 years.

Johnston initially intended to create a black battalion that would include a mobile company comprising Gilmer’s rifles and additional troops.

Formed in 2007, the Rifles is an infantry regiment of the British Army.

We heard rifle fire off in the distance.

Verb, intransitive:
She rifled through the cassette tapes.

I panicked, rifling through my drawers to find matching socks.

Verb, transitive:
We have a new line of replacement rifled barrels.

Yes, you can fire lead bullets in the S&W’s conventionally rifled barrel.

Every Rossi rifle barrel is button rifled for maximum accuracy.

The barrel can be rifled and this rifling causes the projectile to spin, increasing its accuracy.

They rifled the house for money.

The lieutenant’s servant rifled the dead man’s possessions.

Inside the bombed-out palace, troops from Attack Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, rifled through documents and inventoried the building.

He rifled a hard, rising shot from just inside the blue line.

Ferguson rifled home his fourth goal of the season.

He could rifle that ball to the outside as fast as anybody.

Derivatives:
Adjective: unriffled Adjective: rifled
Noun: rifleman, riflemen, rifler, riflescope, rifling
Phrasal Verb
rifle through
History of the Word:
Late 18th century in the sense of the shallow part of a stream that creates ripples, perhaps from a variant of the verb ruffle, influenced by ripple.
  1. Mid-17th century from the French rifler meaning graze, scratch, is of Germanic origin. The earliest noun usage was in rifle gun, which had rifles or spiral grooves cut into the inside of the barrel.
  2. Middle English rifel, 1325–75, from the Old French rifler meaning to graze, scratch, strip, plunder, is of Germanic origin.
  3. 1940s, from rifle “gun”, suggestive of explosive speed.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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Resources for Riffle versus Rifle

Apple Dictionary.com

Assaf, Sami, Persi Diaconis, and K. Soundararajan. “The Annals of Applied Probability.” 2011. Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Project Euclid. Web. Accessed 15 July 2019. <https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdfview_1/euclid.aoap/1307020385>

Dictionary.com: riffle, rifle

The Free Dictionary: rifle

Hollandbeck, Andy. “Are You Rifling or Riffling?” ACES News. 1 January 2019. Web. 11 October 2019. <https://aceseditors.org/news/2019/are-you-rifling-or-riffling”>

Lexico.com: riffle, rifle

McCracken, Dave. “The Size of Riffles, Part 2.” The New 49’ers. n.d. Web. Accessed 15 July 2019. <http://www.goldgold.com/the-size-of-riffles-2.html>

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Pinterest Photo Credits:

Wing Historian Preserves AF Story“, 6 July 2012, article by Robert Goetz, US Air Force photo by Rich McFadden, is courtesy of the Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph Public Affairs, and is in the public domain, via the Joint Base San Antonio. “Fish & Wildlife Hunting Seminars” is in the public domain, courtesy of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.

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4 responses to “Word Confusion: Riffle versus Rifle

  1. Interesting. The way we were taught, the Intransitive Verb on socks and tapes would still take ‘riffled’. ‘Rifled’ would still be allowed for theft, though.