winnow
Example Sentences
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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
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
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
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
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
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
The sieving winnowed out tiny pebbles and other impurities.
From "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park
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
The winnowing has hit especially hard in Delaware, DuPont’s home base.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
The stocks that survived this winnowing process are listed in alphabetical order.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2025
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
Vocabulary lists containing winnow
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Mythology
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