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

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

It and a second semifinal on Thursday will winnow a field of 37 nations to 26 who will compete in Saturday’s final against a backdrop of both parties and protests.

From Seattle Times ● May 7, 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

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

Debora Cahn and John C. Richards’s screenplay winnows the story down almost entirely to the perspective of the title character and the swiftness with which his revered status vanished.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 5, 2018

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

From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

The two debates reflect a winnowed field of mayoral hopefuls who are leading the pack both in polling and in money raised ahead of the June 2 primary.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2026

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

A winnowed cattle supply has driven up prices.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 11, 2025

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

From Slate ● Oct. 14, 2025

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

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

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 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

Discovery’s winnowing of bidders is expected to accelerate this week.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2025

Since it was impossible to eat wild grains without first winnowing, grinding and cooking them, people who gathered these grains carried them back to their temporary campsites for processing.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari