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.
-
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
“ET” has long been culling the archives for the career retrospectives that air on weekends under the title “ET Vault Unlocked,” which are also available on demand through YouTube.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 23, 2026
In 2020, it ordered the culling of all roughly 17 million farm-raised mink in Denmark to stop the spread of a coronavirus mutation, a directive it later admitted had no legal grounds.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 19, 2026
My father took a few days off to shoot duck, and then put the culling board back on the Portia Sue and headed out for oysters.
From "Jacob Have I Loved" by Katherine Paterson
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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.