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Synonyms

weed out

British  

verb

  1. (tr, adverb) to separate out, remove, or eliminate (anything unwanted)

    to weed out troublesome students
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
weed out Idioms  

  1. Eliminate as inferior, unsuited, or unwanted, as in She was asked to weed out the unqualified applicants. This expression transfers removing weeds from a garden to removing unwanted elements from other enterprises. [First half of 1500s]

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.

Team members also serve as a reality check, helping to weed out bad ideas.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 5, 2026

Some viewers see it as a thinly veiled endorsement of the policy - hailed in the film as a crippling masterstroke to weed out fake currency from Pakistan.

From BBC • Mar. 24, 2026

Informed’s agentic-AI software has been used by large lenders such as JPMorgan Chase’s Chase Auto group, GM Financial, Ally Financial and Capital One to vet borrowers and weed out fraud.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 16, 2025

The firm has denied paying clients to sue and said it has “systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.”

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 28, 2025

And after years of bumbling, potentially crooked investigations into the Osage murders, White needed to weed out half facts and build an indubitable narrative based on what he called an “unbroken chain of evidence.”

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann

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.