sift
Americanverb (used with object)
-
sifts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sifted,
past participle, past
-
sifting
present participle
-
to separate and retain the coarse parts of (flour, ashes, etc.) with a sieve.
-
to scatter or sprinkle through or by means of a sieve.
to sift sugar onto cake.
-
to separate by or as if by a sieve.
-
to examine closely.
The detectives are still sifting the evidence.
- Synonyms:
- probe, search, inspect, scrutinize, sort
-
to question closely.
verb (used without object)
-
sifts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sifted,
past participle, past
-
sifting
present participle
-
to sift something.
-
to pass or fall through or as if through a sieve.
verb
-
(tr) to sieve (sand, flour, etc) in order to remove the coarser particles
-
to scatter (something) over a surface through a sieve
-
(tr) to separate with or as if with a sieve; distinguish between
-
(tr) to examine minutely
to sift evidence
-
(intr) to move as if through a sieve
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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sifternoun
-
outsiftverb (used with object)
-
presiftverb (used with object)
-
resiftverb (used with object)
-
unsiftedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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siftsimple
-
siftssimple
-
have siftedperfect
-
has siftedperfect
-
am siftingprogressive
-
are siftingprogressive
-
is siftingprogressive
-
have been siftingperfect progressive
-
has been siftingperfect progressive
Past
-
siftedsimple
-
had siftedperfect
-
was siftingprogressive
-
were siftingprogressive
-
had been siftingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sift
before 900; Middle English siften, Old English siftan; cognate with Dutch, Middle Low German siften; akin to sieve
Explanation
To bake a cake, you sift the flour to get out the lumps. When you sift, you separate out one thing from another. When you sort through the mail looking for the bills or go through your photos to find that shot of your dog, that’s sifting, too. Detectives sift through piles of evidence when investigating crimes, and you might sift through the hundred applications you get from drummers eager to join your band, to find Ms. Right. When you're at the beach, you can sift sand through your fingers, and you might see big machines that sift the sand to clean it.
Vocabulary lists containing sift
Stairway To Leaven: Baking Vocabulary
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Holes
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Ender's Game
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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.
See Examples For:
Rescue teams and family members continue to sift through the rubble in La Guaira, searching for victims and loved ones.
From Barron's ● Jul. 30, 2026
She remembers scooping up what remained of her artwork and watching it sift through her fingers, the porcelain broken and changed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Mr. Burnham’s problems sift into two categories, “U-turn” and “huh?”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
For the next hour or so, the volunteers sift through the seagrass as it lays flat on the shore.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
I sift through many things —what he’s said lately and what he’s done.
From "I Am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak
His Codex agent sifts through heaps of options flow data to identify big, aggressive trades, likely coming from institutional players.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
AI sifts through tens of millions of records of data for marketers, who then create AI agents that carry out complex marketing tasks.
From Barron's ● Feb. 12, 2026
In an office in central London, Signify's small team quietly sifts through thousands of posts.
From BBC ● Dec. 3, 2025
The Policy Lab sifts through all that data, evaluating some 500 markers to generate a list of individuals and families that its model predicts to be at high risk of becoming homeless.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2025
Beyond the carton-covered window, rain sifts down from a platinum-colored sky.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Agents sifted through hundreds of thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2026
In an abandoned luxury apartment in the Syrian capital Damascus, armed men dressed in military fatigues sifted through designer clothes and documents.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
Then they sifted through each potential match to trace the two whales' journey across the world.
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
The government's tracking system relies on an amalgam of public and private information sifted, sorted and packaged by contractors that include Palantir Technologies, Deloitte, Japanese conglomerate NEC and smaller spyware specialists.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026
Upstairs, Glory sifted through a walk-in closet stuffed with all sorts of clothes and shoes.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
Instead, it was a layered cake made from whipping butter and sugar until it was frothy and then sifting in the dry ingredients.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
Best the Wafles can tell after sifting through family documents last year, Ferris Wafle had just begun playing at William & Mary in 1928, as an offensive and defensive lineman.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
Others carry the earth to a nearby seasonal river, where mostly women crouch in the murky water, washing and sifting mud and sand hoping to detect a tiny trace of the element.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026
Telegram channels -- sifting through intelligence data -- close the information gap, putting out daily forecasts on the probability of different types of attacks.
From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026
She stood by the stove, sifting the yellow corn meal from her fingers into a kettle of boiling, salted water.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
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.
