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

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

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

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

Rendell said he would prefer a model in which the primary season begins with four conventional debates, followed by six issue forums as the field winnows.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 11, 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

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

The field of candidates would be winnowed down by a committee before being added to ballots.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 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

While most of that came from leaving foreign markets, the winnowing has also reached Whirlpool’s refrigerator plant in Amana, Iowa, which has gone from about 3,000 jobs to 650.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 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

Everybody knew it was his mother, Kate, who saved him from affliction and the early winnowing that is every plantation slave’s first trial.

From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead