rummage

English

Etymology

From Old French arrumage (confer French arrimage), from arrumer (“to arrange the cargo in the hold”) (confer French arrimer and Spanish arrumar).

Pronunciation
  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈɹʌm.ɪdʒ/
  • audio (US)(file)

Verb

rummage (third-person singular simple present rummages, present participle rummaging, simple past and past participle rummaged)

  1. (transitive, nautical) To arrange (cargo, goods, etc.) in the hold of a ship; to move or rearrange such goods.
  2. (transitive, nautical) To search a vessel for smuggled goods.
    After the long voyage, the customs officers rummaged the ship.
  3. (transitive) To search something thoroughly and with disregard for the way in which things were arranged.
    She rummaged her purse in search of the keys.
    The burglars rummaged the entire house for cash and jewellery.
    • (Can we date this quote?) Howell
      He […] searcheth his pockets, and taketh his keys, and so rummageth all his closets and trunks.
    • (Can we date this quote?) Matthew Arnold
      What schoolboy of us has not rummaged his Greek dictionary in vain for a satisfactory account!
    • 2013 August 10, Lexington, “Keeping the mighty honest”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
      British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.
  4. (intransitive) To hastily search for something in a confined space and among many items by carelessly turning things over or pushing things aside.
    She rummaged in the drawers trying to find the missing sock.
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.

Translations

Noun

rummage (plural rummages)

  1. (obsolete) Commotion; disturbance.
  2. A thorough search, usually resulting in disorder.
    • (Can we date this quote?) Walpole
      He has such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony.
  3. An unorganized collection of miscellaneous objects; a jumble.
  4. (nautical) A place or room for the stowage of cargo in a ship; also, the act of stowing cargo; the pulling and moving about of packages incident to close stowage; formerly written romage.

See also
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