cull
- to choose; select; pick.
- to gather the choice things or parts from.
- to collect; gather; pluck.
- act of culling.
- something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.
Origin of cull
Synonyms
See more synonyms for cull on Thesaurus.comExamples from the Web for culled
Contemporary Examples
White-bread ISIS recruits, culled from the wastelands of Web 2.0, call that tidy division into terrible question.
Her songs, which she cowrote with songwriter-producer Joel Little, are all culled from real-life experiences.
Here are six questions (and answers) culled from our conversation.
But the data Republicans culled are much more granular than that.
The vast majority of the data for the report is culled from documents from U.S. federal court cases.
Historical Examples
Some little ray of consolation I culled, perhaps, from my thoughts of Roxalanne.
Bardelys the MagnificentRafael Sabatini
Many are the lots of beasts I have bought and culled, and I had to pay for it.
Cattle and Cattle-breedersWilliam M'Combie
He assured the women that the samples were not culled: "Jes' took as they come."
Watch Yourself Go ByAl. G. Field
You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.
Familiar QuotationsJohn Bartlett
Every morning she found beside her plate a bouquet which he had culled.
Which?Ernest Daudet
cull
- to choose or gather the best or required examples
- to take out (an animal, esp an inferior one) from a herd
- to reduce the size of (a herd or flock) by killing a proportion of its members
- to gather (flowers, fruit, etc)
- to cease to employ; get rid of
- the act or product of culling
- an inferior animal taken from a herd or group
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for culled
cull
n.
"dupe, saphead," rogues' slang from late 16c., perhaps a shortening of cullion "base fellow," originally "testicle" (from French couillon, from Old French coillon "testicle; worthless fellow, dolt," from Latin coleus, literally "strainer bag;" see cojones), though another theory traces it to Romany (Gypsy) chulai "man." Also sometimes cully, though some authorities assert cully was the canting term for "dupe" and cull was generic "man, fellow," without implication of gullibility. Cf. also gullible.
cull
v.
c.1200, originally "put through a strainer," from Old French coillir (12c., Modern French cueillir) "collect, gather, pluck, select," from Latin colligere "gather together, collect," originally "choose, select" (see collect). Related: Culled; culling. As a noun, from 1610s.