rootled

Hence the libraries and laboratories; the observatories; the splendid equipment of costly and delicate instruments which now stands on glass shelves, where centuries ago the grasses waved and the swine rootled.

A room of one's own 2006

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.

A room of one's own 2006

Dropping the clipboard, she rootled through the drawer.

Conferences are Murder McDermid, Val 1999

They rootled in the tall grass or shouldered in long, snaky lines through the canes, their trunks waggling.

The Trail Book Mary Hunter Austin 1901

I rootled round the camp, and found Tertius gassing about as

Stalky & Co. Rudyard Kipling 1900

Also pigs; for half a dozen great raw-boned pink and dirty swine rootled about in the woods near by for sustenance.

The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade August 1914 to March 1915 Edward Gleichen 1900

I know by now from having done it for the greater part of my life that this is a recurring theme, and I rootled around instinctively in search of the snowdrops.

Life and style | guardian.co.uk Dan Pearson 2010

Once they have been rootled up to the surface by a wild boar, or the farmer has stopped drenching his field with fertiliser, or Longhorn cattle have trampled down the bracken, they burst into glorious life.

Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph 2010

They have all been harvested, re-planted, coppiced, grazed, undergrowth-burnt for hunting, managed for tan-bark, cut over for charcoal and rootled over by domestic pigs for pannage for more than a dozen feudal centuries.

Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph 2010

I know by now from having done it for the greater part of my life that this is a recurring theme, and I rootled around instinctively in search of the snowdrops.

Life and style | guardian.co.uk Dan Pearson 2010