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Winnow Has Old English Roots
Beginning as windwian in Old English, winnow first referred to the removal of chaff from grain by a current of air. This use was soon extended to describe the removal of anything undesirable or unwanted (a current example of this sense would be "winnowing out sensitive material"). People then began using the word for the selection of the most desirable elements (as in "winnowing out the qualified applicants"). The association of winnow with the movement of air also led to the meanings "to brandish" and "to beat with or as if with wings," but those uses are now rare. The last meanings blew in around the beginning of the 19th century: they are "to blow on" and "to blow in gusts."
Examples of winnow in a Sentence
Eva Dou, Washington Post, 11 Apr. 2024
As consumers have stampeded to small crossovers since 2014, the compact car field has winnowed.
—Alex Kwanten, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2024
In other words, Marling spent her college years winnowing down the complicated and theoretical to the simple, elegant and true.
—Daniel D'addario, Variety, 8 Nov. 2023
At the end of the process, the commission will interview some of the top contenders, before winnowing the list to three.
—Libor Jany, Los Angeles Times, 16 Feb. 2024
Tasked with winnowing the field down to 17 semifinalists, the judges filled out score sheets for each part of the competition.
—Madison Malone Kircher Bridget Bennett, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2024
To free yourself from the tyranny of too many choices, add your locality or organism of interest to your search term (ie, Invasive Maryland Plants) to winnow things down.
—Bob Hirshon, Discover Magazine, 2 Mar. 2024
Damian Lillard and Bobby Portis in the mix for 2024 U.S. Olympic team
USA Basketball announced a 41-person player pool that will be winnowed down to 12 for the Olympic team that will compete in Paris in the summer and Damian Lillard and Bobby Portis are part of that pool.
—Jim Owczarski, Journal Sentinel, 24 Jan. 2024
In a field that has winnowed from more than a dozen candidates to just three after the exit of Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Monday, voters options will also be increasingly consolidated between the remainders -- something that could both help or hurt Haley.
—Hannah Demissie, ABC News, 17 Jan. 2024
Olesya Dmitracova, CNN, 19 Mar. 2024
Freedom of speech and inquiry are essential in education and democracy, but rigor and objectivity of thought provide the intellectual tools to know what to sift and winnow, distinguishing truth from falsehood.
—WSJ, 30 Nov. 2023
There the trillions begin to feel nature’s winnow: an ocean current is a fluky thing, and it cannot always be relied on to carry a cod egg where a young cod wants to be.
—Robert Kunzig, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019
The Final Four swallows all of it up, like whales eat winnows.
—Josh Criswell, Chron, 3 Apr. 2023
Doreen Fernandez, a Filipino food historian, suggested that the modern idea of street food in the Philippines is rooted in the interdependence of agricultural and fishing communities, which relied on each other to plant, plow and harvest fields, winnow rice, or mend fishing nets.
—Jonah Valdez, Los Angeles Times, 1 Aug. 2022
But Republicans have seen their majorities in the Legislature winnow over the past few years to 31-29 in the House and 17-13 in the Senate and voters could decide Tuesday to put Democrats in charge.
—Andrew Oxford, The Arizona Republic, 3 Nov. 2020
But a larger field generally means a longer contest: A basic rule of presidential primaries is that the more quickly the field winnows, the sooner the eventual winner can reach the majority of delegates necessary to win the nomination.
—Lisa Lerer, New York Times, 12 Feb. 2020
Even if the field winnows, the race appears neck and neck.
—Caitlin Conant, CBS News, 9 Jan. 2020
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'winnow.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near winnow
Cite this Entry
“Winnow.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/winnow. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
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