rifle

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A firearm with a rifled bore, designed to be fired from the shoulder.
2. n. An artillery piece or naval gun with such spiral grooves.
3. n. Troops armed with rifles.
4. v. To cut spiral grooves within (a gun barrel, for example).
5. v. To search with intent to steal.
6. v. To ransack or plunder; pillage.
7. v. To rob: rifle a safe.
8. v. To search vigorously: rifling through my drawers to find matching socks.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To seize and bear away by force; snatch away.
2. To rob; plunder; pillage: often followed by of.
3. To raffle; dispose of in a raffle.
4. To commit robbery or theft.
5. To raffle; play at dice or some other game of chance wherein the winner secures stakes previously agreed upon.
6. In gun-making, to cut spiral grooves in (the bore of a gun-barrel). Grooves are now in universal use for small-arms, and for the most part are used in ordnance. Small-arms are rifled by a cutting-tool attached to a rod and drawn through the barrel, while at the same time a revolution on the longitudinal axis is imparted to the tool. Rifled cannon are rifled by pushing through their bores a cutting-tool mounted on an arbor that exactly fits the bore. See rifling-machine.
7. To whet, as a scythe, with a rifle.
8. To groove firearms spirally along the interior of the bore.
9. n. A firearm or a piece of ordnance having a barrel (or barrels) with a spirally grooved bore. Spirally grooved gun-barrels are of German origin; some authorities think they were invented by Gaspard Kollner of Vienna, in 1498; others regard Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg as the originator, the invention, according to these writers, dating between 1500 and 1520. Straight grooves were used in the flfteenth century, but their purpose was simply to form recesses for the reception of dirt and to aid in cleaning the gun. Spiral grooving has a distinct object beyond this, namely, to impart to the projectile a rotation whereby its flight is rendered more nearly accurate—the principle being that, when the center of gravity in the bullet does not exactly coincide with its longitudinal axis, as is nearly always the case, any tendency to deviate from the vertical plane including that axis will, by the constant revolution of the bullet, be exerted in all directions at right angles with its geometrical axis. A variety of shapes in the cross-sections of the grooves have been and are still used. The number of grooves is also different for different rifles, as is the pitch of the spiral—that is, the distance, measured on the axis of the bore, included by a single turn of the spiral. The variation in small-arms in this particular is wide—from one turn in 17 inches to one turn in 7 feet. In ordnance the pitch is much greater. Breech-loading guns began to appear in the first half of the sixteenth century, and were probably either of French or German origin. Such guns were made in Italy in the latter half of the sixteenth century. During the war of independence in America, a breech-loading rifle invented by Major Patrick Fergusson, and known as the Fergusson rifle, was used; it was the first breech-loading carbine used in the British regular army. A great many breech-loading rifles have since appeared. Muzzle-loading rifles have been superseded as military arms by these guns, and to a large extent the latter have supplanted muzzle-loaders for sporting arms. Many breech-loaders once of importance in American and European warfare have in their turn been superseded by improved arms. Among them is the once justly celebrated Prussian needle-gun. These improvements have culminated in the Winchester and other repeating arms, which admit of refined accuracy of aim with great rapidity of firing. The tendency in modern rifles is toward smaller bores and chambers. The most recent advance in this direction of improvement is of German origin (1889-90), and consists in making rifles of much smaller bore and less weight than have hitherto been used, with bullets of lead and wolfram alloy having a specific gravity 50 per cent. greater than that of the lead and antimony alloy of the common hardened rifle-bullets. The bores of guns with which experiments have been made are less than 8 millimeters in diameter. Some having bores only 4 millimeters (about 1/8 inch) in diameter have been tried with surprising increase of range and effectiveness, on account of the diminished air-resistance. Exclusive of repeating rifles or magazine-guns, the principal differences between modern rifles are in their breech-actions and their firing-mechanism. Some of the more important of these arms are described below.
10. n. A soldier armed with a rifle: so named at a time when the rifle was not the usual weapon of the infantry: as, the Royal Irish Rifles—that is, the 83d and 86th regiments of British infantry.
11. n. A bent stick standing on the butt of the handle of a scythe.
12. n. An instrument used after the manner of a whetstone for sharpening scythes, and consisting of a piece of wood coated with sharp sand or emery, with a handle at one end.

Wiktionary

1. n. A long firearm firing a single projectile, usually with a rifled barrel to improve accuracy.
2. v. to search with intent to steal; to ransack, pillage or plunder.
3. v. To add a spiral to the interior of a gun bore to make a fired bullet spin in flight to improve range and accuracy.
4. v. To strike something with great power.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To seize and bear away by force; to snatch away; to carry off.
2. v. To strip; to rob; to pillage.
3. v. obsolete To raffle.
4. v. obsolete To raffle.
5. v. rare To commit robbery.
6. n. A gun, the inside of whose barrel is grooved with spiral channels, thus giving the ball a rotary motion and insuring greater accuracy of fire. As a military firearm it has superseded the musket.
7. n. (Mil.) A body of soldiers armed with rifles.
8. n. A strip of wood covered with emery or a similar material, used for sharpening scythes.
9. v. To grove; to channel; especially, to groove internally with spiral channels.
10. v. To whet with a rifle. See Rifle, n., 3.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. steal goods; take as spoils
2. v. go through in search of something; search through someone's belongings in an unauthorized way
3. n. a shoulder firearm with a long barrel and a rifled bore