winnow

As the job market cools, they are both raising the bar for entry-level jobs and seeking more consistent criteria to winnow the candidate pool.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026

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

Ahead of Iowa, Ms. Haley had been looking to winnow the field.

From New York Times ● Jan. 21, 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

Then, we came and gathered up what remained of the paddy and took it away to thresh and winnow.

From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya

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

From Science Daily ● Dec. 21, 2023

And while his company’s software winnows candidates, Mr. Garg emphasizes that it is meant to be a helper.

From New York Times ● Mar. 13, 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

The music didn’t so much stop for the line as fade out: the leg to Leeds was winnowed away and lost finally in 2021.

From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2024

His teeth were winnowed away by a vexatious Grisha, and now he can eat only pudding.”

From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo

But there’s an upside to gradually winnowing a lifetime of possessions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

Maybe at peak valuations these stocks were trading on a price-earnings multiples of 30-40 times, Lapping observes, but not after the winnowing caused by AI fears:

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 30, 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

“At the sacred threshing-floor, when they are winnowing, she herself, Demeter of the corn-ripe yellow hair, divides the grain and the chaff in the rush of the wind, and the heap of chaff grows white.”

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