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Glite Dictionary
🧺 Separating material 🌾 Separated particles
sifting

sifting

3.6
The act of separating wanted parts from unwanted bits by passing them through a sieve
  • noun
  • /ˈsɪftɪŋ/
translation icon : cribado
  • At the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, dogs were used to assist in locating human remains during the sifting and sorting of WTC debris.

And it's mostly it was a sifting of who was talented and smart and ambitious in their careers.

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Examples

  • It's not a total waste, but for every nugget there is a, a giant heap of dung that I have to go sifting through generally.

  • However, it's a process of sifting and sifting and sifting until you get just the essentials, you know, and all the trashy things are gone, you know.

  • And it's mostly it was a sifting of who was talented and smart and ambitious in their careers.

    ReasonTV

  • One of them is the filtering property, the sifting property of the unit impulse.

  • There's not been much sifting or grading done to it.

  • That's not the way things work in reality, and we get a really interesting description of a mental sort of process of sifting through this going on here.

    Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

  • What is more, a careful sifting of Gregory's diplomatic response to the crisis suggests an ecclesiology that does not fit well into either the modern Orthodox or the modern Roman Catholic model.

    Academic text (2009)

  • Although working dogs arrived at the Fresh Kills Landfill on and after September 17, the constant sifting and sorting of debris from both the WTC and pre-existing waste continuously aerosolized particulate matter and toxins.

    Academic text (2010)

  • The sifting of flour is necessary to ensure there are no lumps in the mixture.

  • During the harvest, farmers spend hours on the sifting of grain to separate it from chaff.

Synonyms

winnowing
vssifting
3 7.5

Separating grain from chaff by tossing it into the air

separates by passing material through a sieve rather than by air

How Thorough

filter
139 2.8
screening
1 3.9
sifting
3.6
winnowing
3 7.5

Surface Forms

sifting singular
siftings plural

Morphology

sifting = sift (transparent) = sift + ing

The noun is a regular gerund/nominalization formed from the verb 'sift' with '-ing', directly expressing the action.

Etymology

Sifting comes from an old English word related to the tool sieve and the verb sift, which meant 'to pass material through holes' so the small parts move through and the rest stays. So sifting is the action of separating grain, flour, or other material by passing it through a sieve.