Other forms: rummaging, rummaged, rummages
To rummage is to search untidily through a mass of things. Both hands in the drawer, everything coming out.
The untidiness is essential — you rummage in a bag, rummage through a box, rummage about in the loft. Somebody searching neatly is not rummaging. The word is nautical in origin, from the stowing of cargo in a hold, which is why the sense of turning over a great heap survives. American English has the rummage sale, where a church or school sells donated odds and ends, and Britain calls the same thing a jumble sale.
1verbrummageTo search through a mass of things in an untidy way.
“He rummaged in his pockets for the ticket.”
To rummage was to stow cargo. Old French arrumer meant to arrange the goods in a ship's hold, and rummaging became searching only once somebody had to go back through it all.
Old French
arrumage
Middle English
ronage
English, today
rummage
Built from
From Middle English ronage, from Old French arrumage (compare French arrimage), from arrumer (“to arrange the cargo in the hold”) (compare French arrimer and Spanish arrumar).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA