fossick

verb

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.

1. To search for something; to rummage.

   “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.”

2. To search for something; to rummage.

   “[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.”

3. To search for something; to rummage.

   “The "fossicker" is one who wanders about old diggings, armed with a knife and pan, and who seldom sinks or drives, but "fossicks" or searches about the old heaps of dirt, or in the bottoms of deserted shafts and drives, keen-eyed after unobserved gold.”

   “In New South Wales the bureau has been able to dispose of a large contingent of the workless by sending them to fossick for gold on old or deserted goldfields.”

4. To be troublesome.