fossick
/ˈfɑsɪk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To search for something; to rummage.
Australian usage; New Zealand usage; British usage; Intransitive verb
verb
To search for something; to rummage.
Australian usage; New Zealand usage; British usage; Intransitive verb
verb
To search for something; to rummage.
Australian usage; New Zealand usage; British usage; Intransitive verb
Example Sentences
- "I dined alone and sat after dinner in the smoking-room, for Odell never suggested the library, though I would have given a lot to fossick about that place."
- "I could have built a better fire myself but I was too cold when we arrived to fossick around for twigs. I went back to the warm car and let Neil and Henry fossick. Playing the dumb broad is profitable too."
- "How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant. There wasn't much room for beauty in the lives of our men. The only exception was the strange Yuri Orlov who carved lovely, old-world toys from stuff he fossicked up from the forest floor."
- "He began to fossick again, shifting the bars of soap around until he became aware of something moving behind him."
- "Back in the kitchen, and with his mother off fossicking around for place mats, he tried to start the oven a couple of more times, then stood back scraching [sic] his head."
- "[T]he honorable member went to the Railway department, and fossicked about for information, and he found, forsooth, that there had been a little rise in the salary of a son of a member of the House."
Etymology
Probably from dialectal fossick (“to ferret out”), fossuck (“troublesome person”), fussick (“to potter over one's work”), fussock (“to bustle about”), further origin uncertain. Compare fuss.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈfɑsɪk/
- British English: /ˈfɒsɪk/