Sifting

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Sift \Sift\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Sifted}; p. pr. & vb. n.
     {Sifting}.] [AS. siftan, from sife sieve. [root]151a. See
     {Sieve}.]
     1. To separate with a sieve, as the fine part of a substance
        from the coarse; as, to sift meal or flour; to sift
        powder; to sift sand or lime.


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     2. To separate or part as if with a sieve.
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              When yellow sands are sifted from below,
              The glittering billows give a golden show. --Dryden.
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     3. To examine critically or minutely; to scrutinize.
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              Sifting the very utmost sentence and syllable.
                                                    --Hooker.
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              Opportunity I here have had
              To try thee, sift thee.               --Milton.
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              Let him but narrowly sift his ideas.  --I. Taylor.
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     {To sift out}, to search out with care, as if by sifting.
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From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  sifting
       n : the act of separating grain from chaff; "the winnowing was
           done by women" [syn: {winnow}, {winnowing}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  64 Moby Thesaurus words for "sifting":
     amassing evidence, appraisal, assessment, assortment, bolting,
     categorization, clarification, classification, close inquiry,
     colature, culling, department of investigation,
     destructive distillation, detection, detective work, distillation,
     edulcoration, elution, elutriation, essentialization, evaluation,
     exhaustive study, extraction, factoring, filtering, filtration,
     gauging, gradation, grouping, hearing, identification, indagation,
     investigation, investigative bureau, leaching,
     legislative investigation, legwork, lixiviation, percolation,
     perscrutation, placement, probe, purification, ranking, refinement,
     research, riddling, screening, selection, separation, sieving,
     sifting out, sleuthing, sorting, sorting out, spiritualization,
     straining, sublimation, subordination, taxonomy, triage, weighing,
     winnowing, witch-hunt