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Glite Dictionary
🌾 Separates grain ✅ Selects the best
winnower

winnower

8.0
A person or thing that chooses the best items from a group
  • noun
  • /ˈwɪnoʊər/
  • Archaic
translation icon : seleccionador
  • As the Clinton example indicates, they have also supplanted the political parties as winnowers and kingmakers.

Examples

  • The most important role that the media occupy is that of winnower, for they have tremendous influence on the viability of campaigns, especially early in the process.

    Academic text (2000)

  • The media have, in many ways, replaced the parties as sources of political information, providers of political ideology, and winnowers of candidates.

    Academic text (2000)

  • This is a winnower, or you might say a cherry picker.

  • As a winnower, she expertly selects only the best fruits and vegetables for the market.

  • The editor acted as a winnower, ensuring that only the most relevant articles made it to print.

  • In his role as a winnower, he filtered through numerous applicants to find the most qualified candidates.

Synonyms

divider
vswinnower
5 4.1

A person who separates people or things into groups

aims to sort by value or suitability, not merely to split into parts
chooser
vswinnower
4 3.5

A person who picks one thing from a group of things

prefers removing unsuitable items and keeping useful ones by careful elimination
discriminator
vswinnower
3 7.9

A person or thing that notices differences between similar objects

focuses on actively separating useful from unfit items rather than just noting differences
culler
vswinnower
8.4

A person who removes damaged or unwanted items from a batch, like fruit

focuses on keeping what is useful rather than only removing bad items

Antonyms

blender
96 1.0

A kitchen machine that mixes, chops, or makes food smooth

Surface Forms

winnower singular
winnowers plural

Morphology

winnower = winnow (semi-transparent) = winnow + er

Agentive formation is clear, but the sense here is a figurative extension (selecting valuable from worthless) rather than the literal agricultural process.

Etymology

Winnower first meant someone who used wind to separate grain from 'chaff', and from that image it now means a person or thing that 'separates' the valuable from what is not useful.