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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
Arthur Jones Ii, ABC News, 9 May 2025
That winnowed the field of borrowers from roughly 42 million to a total of 19.6 million borrowers.
—Anne Marie D. Lee, CBS News, 5 May 2025
The National Science Foundation canceled 73 additional grants on May 9 as the Department of Government Efficiency continues winnowing the agency's projects, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the changes.
—Riley Beggin, USA Today, 9 May 2025
Finding Sundance’s new home was a yearlong affair, which included winnowing down the finalists from 67 cities that sent in comprehensive information.
—Chris Gardner, HollywoodReporter, 27 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 30 Jun. 2025.
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