rifling

Pluralriflings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The system of spiral grooves cut into the bore of a gun barrel or cannon, which spins a projectile to keep it stable in flight.

   Like the spin a quarterback puts on a football to keep it flying straight: the grooves do that to the bullet.

   Gunsmiths examined the rifling for wear before restoring the antique rifle.

   The rifling in this old cannon was unusually shallow and widely spaced.

   Note

   The finished pattern, the thing a gunsmith inspects, measures and finds worn, and it comes in named types. Shunt rifling, a design for cannon, cut one side of each groove deeper than the other, so that shot fitted with projections could be loaded by the deeper part. The plural riflings serves when several such patterns are compared. Context tells it from the cutting process: you examine this one, you carry out the other.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of rifle.

   Burglars spent the night rifling through every cabinet in the office.

   The detective found someone rifling through the confidential files.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb, from hurried searching to plunder to gun-making. In the searching sense it is intransitive and usually takes through (rifling through the drawers). The plundering senses are transitive and take a direct object (rifling the house). The gunnery meaning is the one that also stands as the noun for the grooves.

   Thieves were rifling the dead man's pockets before anyone arrived.

   The workshop was busy rifling new barrels for the army.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act or process of cutting the spiral grooves into the bore of a gun barrel or cannon.

   Like cutting threads into a screw, but done deep inside a long metal barrel.

   The rifling of cannon barrels was slow, skilled work in the nineteenth century.

   Modern machines have made rifling far faster than the old hand methods.

   Note

   Here the word names the work rather than its result: the job of cutting grooves into a bore, which is why it sits naturally with words of time and labor (the rifling took weeks). It is the noun of the verb rifle in its gunnery meaning, adding a spiral groove so a bullet spins for better range and accuracy. Keep it apart from the grooves themselves, which the same spelling also names.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of letting playing cards cascade down one at a time toward the table or one's hand, with the thumb resting on the top edges to control speed and flow.

   Like a small waterfall of cards, slowed and steadied by your thumb.

   His rifling of the deck produced a satisfying cascade onto the felt.

   A clean rifling lets each card fall without sticking to the next.

   Note

   A card handler's term, and the thumb does the work: its pressure on the top edges decides how fast the cascade runs, so a good rifling is judged by evenness, each card dropping clean. Watch its near-twin riffle, which the verb rifle itself points to for flicking quickly through papers. The two spellings sit close in sound and sense, so check which one a given text uses.

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