Pry vs Rummage - What's the difference?
pry | rummage |
To look where one is not welcome; to be nosey.
To look closely and curiously at.
* Shakespeare
The act of prying
An excessively inquisitive person
A lever.
Leverage.
To use leverage to open or widen. (See also prise and prize.)
(nautical) To arrange (cargo, goods, etc.) in the hold of a ship; to move or rearrange such goods.
(nautical) To search a vessel for smuggled goods.
To search something thoroughly and with disregard for the way in which things were arranged.
* Howell
* (Matthew Arnold) (1822-1888)
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
, title= To hastily search for something in a confined space and among many items by carelessly turning things over or pushing things aside.
* , chapter=8
, title= (obsolete) Commotion; disturbance.
A thorough search, usually resulting in disorder.
* Walpole
An unorganized collection of miscellaneous objects; a jumble.
(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 .
As an adverb pry
is allegedly.As a verb rummage is
(nautical) to arrange (cargo, goods, etc) in the hold of a ship; to move or rearrange such goods.As a noun rummage is
(obsolete) commotion; disturbance.pry
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) pryen, . More at (l).Verb
(en-verb)- Watch thou and wake when others be asleep, / To pry into the secrets of the state.
Noun
Etymology 2
1800, ("lever"), construed as a plural noun or as a 3rd person singular verb.Noun
(pries)Verb
(en-verb)rummage
English
Verb
(rummag)- Hesearcheth his pockets, and taketh his keys, and so rummageth all his closets and trunks.
- What schoolboy of us has not rummaged his Greek dictionary in vain for a satisfactory account!
Keeping the mighty honest, passage=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.}}
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=Philander went into the next room
Noun
(en noun)- He has such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony.
Quotations
''"And this, I take it,- Horatio, in "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare, act 1 scene 1 l 103-106
''Is the main motive of our preparations
''The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this post-haste and rummage in the land."
