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Winnow Has Old English Roots
As one Bob Dylan song goes, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” In fact, all you need to do is hold up a dandelion puff the next time there’s a breeze blowing, and watch the wind winnow the silver-white seeds from the rest of the head. Winnow and wind are both ancient words in English, and both share an ancestor with the Latin word for wind, ventus. Winnow first applied to the removal of chaff (seed coverings and other unwanted debris) from grain using the wind or other air current. 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 down the list to the most qualified applicants”). Although these senses are more familiar today to most English users than the one used in processing grain, if you have trouble remembering any of them, just remember that the answer, friend, is blowing in the wind.
Examples of winnow in a Sentence
James Perkins Mastromarino, NPR, 3 Apr. 2025
The James Beard Foundation on Wednesday winnowed its list of 2025 award semifinalists down to the finalists, with four San Francisco contenders and one Mendocino County one remaining in the hunt for the prestigious culinary awards.
—Linda Zavoral, Mercury News, 2 Apr. 2025
Since that time, however, cable has been winnowed by the migration of traditional TV watchers to streaming outlets.
—Brian Steinberg, Variety, 2 Apr. 2025
On the last day of the season, when the apprentices had been winnowed from 16 to two, then-emcee Donald Trump fired Annie on national television in favor of the comedienne Joan Rivers.
—Richard Lederer, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for winnow
Cite this Entry
“Winnow.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/winnow. Accessed 21 May. 2025.
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