rifle

rifle — noun

1. A long-barrelled firearm that you hold against your shoulder and use to shoot at

1.nounB1
Definition

A long-barrelled firearm that you hold against your shoulder and use to shoot at targets that are far away with high precision.

Example

Rania aimed the rifle at the target and held her breath before pulling the trigger.

noun: a shoulder-held firearm with a long barrel

After cleaning his rifle, the hunter stored it in a locked cabinet.

common verb collocation: clean / store a rifle

Common collocations
  • load a rifle
  • fire a rifle
  • aim a rifle
  • rifle barrel
  • rifle scope
  • hunting rifle
  • assault rifle
Synonyms
  • firearm

    broader term that includes pistols and shotguns; more formal

  • gun

    much more common, everyday word for any shooting weapon

  • long gun

    technical term distinguishing rifles and shotguns from handguns

Common Mistakes

He bought a riffle from the store.
He bought a rifle from the store.
'rifle' has one 'f' and one 'l'; 'riffle' (two f's) is a different word meaning to flick through pages.

rifle — verb

Word family

  • rifleman
    nounC1
  • rifling
    nounC1
  • rifled
    adjectiveC1
  • rifler
    nounC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: verb/1

'Rifle through' suggests a fast, careless search — the emphasis is on speed and the intention to find something, often with dishonest motives. A thief rifles through a desk looking for money. 'Rummage through' also means a disorganised search, but without the criminal connotation; you rummage through a drawer for a missing key. 'Ransack' is far more violent and destructive — someone ransacks a room by overturning furniture and emptying every container, causing visible chaos. 'Scour' is the opposite of careless: it means to search every part of a place thoroughly and systematically. Police scour a crime scene for evidence; a parent scours the house for a lost phone. Choose 'rifle through' when speed and dishonesty are key, 'rummage' for messy neutral searching, 'ransack' for destructive searching, and 'scour' for careful exhaustive searching.

rifle throughrummage throughransackscour

Common collocations

Nouns

Adverbs

Phrases

  • rifle through someone's belongings
  • rifle a house of valuables

Prepositions

Etymology

Proto-GermanicOld FrenchEnglish

The word 'rifle' comes from Old French 'rifler', meaning 'to scratch, file, or plunder', which itself traces back to a Proto-Germanic root '*rīfaną' ('to tear, scratch'). The original verb sense of 'to plunder or steal' dates to the 1300s and is still in use today. The noun sense — a type of gun — emerged in the 1700s and refers to the spiral grooves ('rifling') cut into the inside of the gun barrel to make the bullet spin and travel more accurately. So the noun is named after the grooves, and those grooves are named after the old verb meaning 'to scratch or file'.