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Sift   /sɪft/   Listen
verb
Sift  v. t.  (past & past part. sifted; pres. part. sifting)  
1.
To separate with a sieve, as the fine part of a substance from the coarse; as, to sift meal or flour; to sift powder; to sift sand or lime.
2.
To separate or part as if with a sieve. "When yellow sands are sifted from below, The glittering billows give a golden show."
3.
To examine critically or minutely; to scrutinize. "Sifting the very utmost sentence and syllable." "Opportunity I here have had To try thee, sift thee." "Let him but narrowly sift his ideas."
To sift out, to search out with care, as if by sifting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sift" Quotes from Famous Books



... there are no sandpits from which it can be dug, then we must sift it out from river beds or from gravel or even from the sea beach. This kind, however, has these defects when used in masonry: it dries slowly; the wall cannot be built up without interruption but from time to time there must be pauses ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard unto the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce;—this is the patrician, this is the noble, flour, and this the yeomanly, this the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... sat primate and dean, Both dressed like divines, with hand and face clean: Quoth Hugh of Armagh, 'the mob is grown bold.' 'Ay, ay,' quoth the Dean, 'the cause is old gold.' 'No, no,' quoth the primate, 'if causes we sift, The mischief arises from witty Dean Swift.' The smart one replies, 'There's no wit in the case; And nothing of that ever troubled your grace. Though with your state sieve your own motions you s—t, A Boulter by name ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts--Irish • Jonathan Swift

... deliberate with thyself; Pause, ponder, sift: not eager in the choice, Nor jealous of the chosen; fixing fix; Judge before ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... sift downward. The mountain peaks to the northward became obscured as by thin smoke, the afternoon shortened with alarming swiftness. Night, up here with a blizzard brewing, was unthinkable, so after a while the driver ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach


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