WINNOW Synonyms: 123 Similar and Opposite Words

winnow

verb

as in to cull

to remove less desirable choices from a group or list They winnowed the pool of applicants down to a few of the strongest candidates. I tried to winnow out the options that weren't a good value for the price.

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Example Sentences

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Recent Examples of winnow From there, researchers could winnow down their suspects to a couple million signals, then rank them by likelihood of ET origin after accounting for radio frequency interferences from sources like orbital satellites, TV broadcasts, and even kitchen microwaves. —

Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 14 Jan. 2026 To find Ramirez, Hutchison and his colleagues used genealogical methods to winnow down Stitt's killer to one of four brothers. —

Mason Leath, ABC News, 9 Jan. 2026 As in baseball, the awards race may be winnowing to the two true outcomes — a world where Best Picture nominees are either a huge Hollywood blockbuster or a foreign-language film from Cannes. —

Nate Jones, Vulture, 19 Dec. 2025 Finally, Thoreau winnowed once again, translating some, but not all, of the list items to his charts of general phenomena, and carefully noting the dates on which each phenomenon occurred in the spaces of the grid. —

Literary Hub, 17 Dec. 2025 See All Example Sentences for winnow

Recent Examples of Synonyms for winnow

Verb

Despite the shift away from hunting from the air, many still don’t want to see the deer culled.

— Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2026
The Nipah virus, though, has a long incubation rate, which allows the people who have been infected to be isolated and for the infected animals (usually pigs) who gave it to the humans to be culled.

— Nicole Villalpando, Austin American Statesman, 31 Jan. 2026