rifling
/ˈɹaɪflɪŋ/noun, verb
rifling is a noun meaning “The act or process of making the grooves in a rifled cannon or gun barrel” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-I-F-L-I-N-G and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 3 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rifling is riflings.
What does rifling mean?
noun
- 1
The act or process of making the grooves in a rifled cannon or gun barrel.
- 2
The system of grooves in a rifled gun barrel or cannon. Shunt rifling, rifling for cannon, in which one side of the groove is made deeper than the other, to facilitate loading with shot having projections which enter by the deeper part of the grooves.
- 3
The act or process of letting playing cards cascade down one at a time towards the table (or one's hand), controlling the speed and flow with one's thumb, which sits on the top edges of the cards.
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of rifle
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce rifling?
- /ˈɹaɪflɪŋ/
Rifling has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Persent101-rifling.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of rifling
- riflings plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is rifling?
Rifling appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 48,230th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).