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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
Adam B. Vary, Variety, 19 June 2025
Earlier rounds winnowed down the list to 18 finalists, all of whom served their dishes to a new set of judges Friday.
—Michael James Rocha, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 June 2025
DeChambeau shot a 7-over 77 to put him at 10-over through the first two days of golf’s third major of the year, a few shots more than the cutline that winnows the field before the third and fourth rounds.
—Kyle Feldscher, CNN Money, 13 June 2025
The field of contestants, ages 8 to 14, will be winnowed down through several rounds of spelling and giving definitions.
—Bay Area News Group, Mercury News, 27 May 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 4 Jul. 2025.
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