SIFT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Sift

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/sɪft/ Listen

verb

Sift v. t. (past & past part. sifted; pres. part. sifting)

To separate with a sieve, as the fine part of a substance from the coarse; as, to sift meal or flour; to sift powder; to sift sand or lime.

To separate or part as if with a sieve. "When yellow sands are sifted from below, The glittering billows give a golden show."

To examine critically or minutely; to scrutinize. "Sifting the very utmost sentence and syllable." "Opportunity I here have had To try thee, sift thee." "Let him but narrowly sift his ideas."

To sift out, to search out with care, as if by sifting.

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Etymology of 'Sift'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sift" Quotes from Famous Books

... business, Mr. Theydon," he said. "The worst part of it is that it seems to be spreading in an ever-widening circle. If it goes much further we'll be obliged to run in every Chinaman in London, and sift out the decent ones from the heap until we reach the unpleasant residuum. Are you worried about things? If so, I'll send a man to mount ...

— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... nation's ills to cure, To mend small fortunes, and set up the poor; And oft times neatly make their projects known, By mending not the public's, but their own. The poor indeed may prove their watchful cares, That nicely sift and weigh their mean affairs, From scanty earnings nibbling portions small, As mice, by bits, steal cheese with rind and all; But why should statesmen for mechanics carve, What are they fit for but to work ...

— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... that anthropologists must sift and winnow their evidence, like men employed in every other branch of science. And who denies it? What anthropologist of mark accepts as gospel any casual ...

— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... the wisest men have thought our ignorance incurable, conceiving it to arise from the natural dulness and limitation of our faculties. And surely it is a work well deserving our pains to make a strict inquiry concerning the First Principles of Human Knowledge, to sift and examine them on all sides, especially since there may be some grounds to suspect that those lets and difficulties, which stay and embarrass the mind in its search after truth, do not spring from any darkness and intricacy in the objects, or natural defect in the understanding, so ...

— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... Henry Jones. The narrative of Browning's life, in the earlier chapters, makes no pretence to biographical completeness. An immense mass of detail and anecdote bearing upon him is now available and within easy reach. I have attempted to sift out from this picturesque loose drift the really salient and relevant material. Much domestic incident, over which the brush would fain linger, will be missed; on the other hand, the great central epoch ...

— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

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