winnow

Faced with far more applications than slots, prestigious colleges winnow the pool of prospective admits through consideration of their academic records, test scores, activities and personal attributes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2025

If she does enter the contest, the move is expected to winnow the field because of her national profile, fundraising ability and her multiple successful statewide campaigns.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2025

As the number of participating countries expanded over the decades, the E.B.U. set up two semifinals to winnow the field; the first took place on Tuesday, and the second happens Thursday.

From New York Times ● May 9, 2024

The point of the process is to winnow the field to a manageable size, and winnowed the field was.

From Slate ● Jan. 20, 2024

How was she to winnow down her countless questions to a mere troika?

From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood

Then the RNA winnows the contending olfactory-receptor genes down to one.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 21, 2023

The demise of languages winnows the number of prisms through which to refract the world.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2023

It progressively winnows out starlight, and stacks frame after frame to allow any faint planetary light to accumulate and eventually be seen.

From Scientific American ● Feb. 10, 2021

Evolution is blind and evolutionary progress is a misnomer; natural selection carves and winnows according to the ever-changing status quo.

From Salon ● Mar. 17, 2019

It winnows through the stones as we watch, bubbling into the undeserving earth.

From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

What’s the point of watching a game that can be winnowed down to a series of inputs and outputs?

From Salon ● Apr. 13, 2026

But its allure is being winnowed away by the noxious Russian thistle, the spread of which is entirely the fault of the ceaseless and unforgiving prairie wind.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 17, 2025

Per the Hollywood Reporter, Merit’s measly weekly viewer numbers soon winnowed down further, to 17,000.

From Slate ● Oct. 14, 2025

In just three weeks, 68 of the best college teams are winnowed down to one champion.

From BBC ● Apr. 5, 2024

Those invaders get winnowed by natural selection, and only a few of them succeed in establishing themselves as human diseases.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Ten stocks survived this winnowing process, and they are listed in ascending order of their volatility.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 6, 2026

The winnowing of victims has been the result of byzantine legal procedures, strict vetting and tightened eligibility rules, which victims told ProPublica and the Inquirer took them by surprise.

From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026

Ask DePetro why someone might prefer his content to the nightly news, and he’ll gesture toward the rapidly winnowing media industry.

From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2026

The winnowing has hit especially hard in Delaware, DuPont’s home base.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026

“May it be mine,” the reaper prays, “beside Demeter’s altar to dig the great winnowing fan through her heaps of corn, while she stands smiling by with sheaves and poppies in her hand.”

From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton