culling
Americannoun
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the act or process of selecting and removing desirable or undesirable individuals from a group.
Reducing farm exposure to the bacteria will require more rigorous testing and culling of infected animals.
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the process of gathering or collecting.
To realize progress through the transfer of ideas, an informed culling of content and the extension of a shared knowledge base are essential.
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the group of things resulting from either of these processes.
The collection War in Context provides a crucial culling of stories that I would surely have missed had I not read it.
Etymology
Origin of culling
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
This week, host Scott Pelley was also fired after he confronted newsroom leadership about the culling in a tense staff meeting.
From Slate • Jun. 5, 2026
Amid a worrying Covid variant outbreak among minks -- when Denmark was the largest exporter of their furs -- she ordered the culling of some 17 million minks, an order which was later ruled illegal.
From Barron's • Mar. 25, 2026
And in the Darwin-esque culling of leaders that followed, the ones that emerged victorious had little love for the U.S.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 3, 2026
But some animal welfare campaigners said culling was inhumane and not effective in the long term.
From BBC • Feb. 19, 2026
In the 193os, America was infatuated with the pseudoscience of eugenics and its promise of strengthening the human race by culling the “unfit” from the genetic pool.
From "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.