What does rifle mean?
A rifle is a long-barrelled firearm intended to be fired from the shoulder. Its barrel contains rifling, or spiral grooves, that impart spin to the projectile and generally improve its stability and accuracy. The word is standard in military, sporting, and legal contexts, though it may be contrasted with handguns, shotguns, and other firearms. In everyday informal use, “rifle through” means to search rapidly through papers, files, or other materials, and it can suggest a hurried or unsystematic examination. The firearm sense is therefore the dominant modern meaning, while the searching sense is especially common in offices, investigations, and conversations about old documents. The word is also familiar from phrases such as “rifle range,” “rifle barrel,” and “rifle shot.”
A long-barrelled firearm with a rifled barrel, designed to be fired from the shoulder.
"The soldiers trained at the rifle range before deployment."
The term is broad within the category of long guns and may be used for both military and sporting firearms.
To search through a large amount of material quickly, often in a rough or unsystematic way; in some older or literary contexts, to steal or plunder from.
"He rifled through the drawers looking for the missing key."
The modern searching sense is informal. The plundering sense is now less common and may sound archaic or literary.
The regular plural is “rifles”; the same form is used for multiple firearms.
"The display included several historic rifles from the nineteenth century."
A rifle gets its name from the spiral grooves, or rifling, cut into its barrel to make the bullet spin and fly more accurately.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does rifle come from?
The word entered English in the early modern period through French “rifler,” meaning to groove or scratch. French borrowed it from Dutch “rīfelen,” which was associated with “rīf,” a ridge or groove. The mechanical sense developed because the spiral grooves inside a firearm barrel are called rifling; the related verb “riffle” and its variant “riff” preserve older associations with grooves, ridges, and searching through.
Related word forms
How rifle is actually used
As a firearm term, “rifle” is standard and formal. As a verb meaning to search through something, it is informal and usually appears in the phrase “rifle through.”
Easily confused with rifle
A musket is a specific early firearm type with a relatively long barrel, whereas a rifle is the broader modern term for a long-barrelled firearm with rifled barrels.
A carbine is a lighter, shorter-barrelled firearm, while a rifle generally refers to a full-length long gun.