rootle

present singular third person rootles · participle present rootling · participle past rootled · past rootled · alternative rookle

1. to dig into the ground, with the snout.

   Once, presumably, this quadrangle with its smooth lawns, its massive buildings, and the chapel itself was marsh too, where the grasses waved and the swine rootled.

   1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 11

   1 more example

   Removing internal fences allowed the wild Exmoor ponies and Tamworth pigs he introduced to browse and rootle over large distances, their disruptions creating habitats for other animals and plants.

   2019 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian

2. to search for something from a drawer, closet, etc.; to dig out.

   Bathed and changed, she rootled out Lambie from the bottom of her wardrobe.'

   2016, Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 288

   1 more example

   'There's a tin of cocoa in my study somewhere,' Perowne shouted after him. 'Rootle round till you find it, and take it up.'

   1908, Rudyard Kipling, Regulus