as in searching
to look through (as a place) carefully or thoroughly in an effort to find or discover something
rifled the desk drawer in search of the insurance policy
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Recent Examples of rifling
Another goal against Fulham on Sunday continued Cunha’s purple patch; collecting a no-look pass from Casemiro on the right of the penalty area before rifling a powerful effort into the roof of Bernd Leno’s net.
—
Carl Anka, New York Times, 5 Feb. 2026
Heise worked her way into the left faceoff circle before rifling a shot just under the crossbar to give the Frost the win and keep Vancouver winless on the road.
—CBS News, 28 Dec. 2025
Best All-Time NFL Wide Receivers Starting slow in the NFL matters more than ending the season with a win streak, unless that win streak is rifling off 8-10 wins.
—James Brizuela, MSNBC Newsweek, 1 Sep. 2025
Carl Anka, New York Times, 5 Feb. 2026
Heise worked her way into the left faceoff circle before rifling a shot just under the crossbar to give the Frost the win and keep Vancouver winless on the road.
—CBS News, 28 Dec. 2025
Best All-Time NFL Wide Receivers Starting slow in the NFL matters more than ending the season with a win streak, unless that win streak is rifling off 8-10 wins.
—James Brizuela, MSNBC Newsweek, 1 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rifling
Verb
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Police in New Jersey are searching for a vandal who threw bricks through the windows of vehicles parked on streets in at least two Union County towns.—
Allen Devlin,
CBS News,
6 Apr. 2026
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Its reappearance on the literary scene comes at a time when younger generations, who may be naive to MI theory, are searching for new ways to be defined.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
6 Apr. 2026
Verb
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Tasks that once required advanced expertise—like scanning code for vulnerabilities or running attacks that require chaining multiple exploits together—are increasingly being automated or semiautomated by AI systems.—
Beatrice Nolan,
Fortune,
10 Apr. 2026
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Another process that Wen thinks the chip could improve is scanning objects for 3D printing.—
IEEE Spectrum,
IEEE Spectrum,
9 Apr. 2026
Verb
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Investigators would spend weeks building their case, combing through nearly 7,000 texts exchanged over the three months before Harold died.—
Peter Van Sant,
CBS News,
5 Apr. 2026
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After combing through Blue Hills’ finances and internal records, however, the auditors found several other serious problems with how the nonprofit spent millions of dollars in state taxpayer money.—
Andrew Brown,
Hartford Courant,
3 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Rifling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rifling. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.
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