Fossicks

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To seek out and gather valuable resources such as minerals or gemstones in a specific location
2. To explore through soil or waste materials searching for precious stones or valuable minerals
3. To investigate soil or debris to find valuable minerals or gems by digging and careful examination

Etymology: "Fossicks" is the third-person singular present form of "fossick", a verb with a distinctly Australian flavour. The base verb is probably drawn from a set of English dialect words meaning to ferret out, to fuss, or to bustle about over small tasks, such as "fussick" (to potter over one's work) and "fussock" (to bustle about). Those dialect forms are themselves linked to the everyday word "fuss", though the exact route from them to the modern verb remains uncertain. The earliest documented use in the sense of searching for gold comes from J. Miller Marshall's book "Fossicking for Gold", published in 1893. By then the word had settled into the goldfields vocabulary of the Australian colonies, where it described the practice of picking through abandoned diggings, tailings, or loose ground in the hope of finding overlooked nuggets or stones.

Synonyms: search, scramble