cull

American  

[kuhl] / kʌl /

verb (used with object)

1. to select and remove from a group, especially to discard or destroy as inferior.

   When I cull the smaller curved saplings, I'm careful to protect and nurture the straighter and larger trees.

2. to discard unwanted parts or remove choice parts from (a group).

   Ranchers must decide whether to buy expensive feed or cull their herds to weather the drought.

   Synonyms:

   single out, cherry-pick

3. to collect; gather; pluck.

   Quotations are culled from a variety of literature, diaries and letters, local histories, journals, and newspapers.

   Synonyms:

   amass, garner

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noun

1. the act of culling.

2. something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.

cull British  

/ kʌl /

verb

1. to choose or gather the best or required examples

2. to take out (an animal, esp an inferior one) from a herd

3. to reduce the size of (a herd or flock) by killing a proportion of its members

4. to gather (flowers, fruit, etc)

5. to cease to employ; get rid of

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noun

1. the act or product of culling

2. an inferior animal taken from a herd or group

Other Word Forms

• culler
  noun
• outcull
  verb (used with object)
• overcull
  verb (used with object)

Etymology

Origin of cull

First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English coilen, cuilen, cullen, from Anglo-French, Old French coillir, cuillir, from Latin colligere “to gather”; see collect ¹

Explanation

To cull means to select or gather. If you decide to make a literary anthology, you must cull the best possible stories and then arrange them in a pleasing manner. When you use cull as a verb, the things you gather can be the good or bad ones from a group. In your garden, you can cull the good vegetables for dinner, or the rotten ones for the compost pile. In fact, often no judgment of quality is made, as when you cull information from the Internet for your next research project. The sorting through will come later. However, if you use the word as a noun, a cull is a selection of things you intend to reject, often in reference to a group of animals. An outbreak of a disease such as foot-and-mouth disease can cause authorities to order a cull of farm pigs.

Example Sentences

Major floods in Dagestan, protests from farmers against an animal cull in Siberia and authorities blocking attempts to organise protests against the internet outages have also led to localised pockets of frustration.

From Barron's • May 7, 2026

Egg prices surged during those years as a large bird-flu outbreak led producers to cull millions of egg-laying chickens, curbing supplies.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 17, 2026

Barring a cull of that workforce, Spurs will have to keep paying top-tier European salaries while not even playing in the English top flight.

From BBC • Mar. 5, 2026

For now, I’m sticking with Google Photos, with a standing quarterly calendar appointment to cull and curate my library.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 22, 2026

There Call, his hands in heavy rubber gloves, would cull, using a culling hammer.

From "Jacob Have I Loved" by Katherine Paterson

Related Words

• extract
• glean
• pluck
• select
• sift
• winnow