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Sift   /sɪft/   Listen
verb
Sift  v. t.  (past & past part. sifted; pres. part. sifting)  
1.
To separate with a sieve, as the fine part of a substance from the coarse; as, to sift meal or flour; to sift powder; to sift sand or lime.
2.
To separate or part as if with a sieve. "When yellow sands are sifted from below, The glittering billows give a golden show."
3.
To examine critically or minutely; to scrutinize. "Sifting the very utmost sentence and syllable." "Opportunity I here have had To try thee, sift thee." "Let him but narrowly sift his ideas."
To sift out, to search out with care, as if by sifting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sift" Quotes from Famous Books



... leisure, not to be assimilated in a few hours by the average alert reader. In those days, Freud could not leave out any detail likely to make his extremely novel thesis evidentially acceptable to those willing to sift data. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... good and strong in us comes from God, and not from ourselves; if we are conceited, and confident in ourselves; then we cut ourselves off from God's grace, and give place to Satan the Devil, that he may sift us like wheat, as he did St. Peter; and then in some shameful hour, we may find ourselves saying and doing things which we would never have believed we could have done. God grant, that if ever we fall into such unexpected sin, it ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up Saint Vitus's Dance—found, as I had expected, that I had that, too—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learned that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... Weigh the facts. Sift the evidence. The jug was standing on the mantelpiece, for all eyes to behold. Gussie had been complaining of thirst. You found him in here, laughing heartily. I think that there can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents of that jug ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... of our system; to the inspectorate come all complaints or information as to defects in goods, insolence or inefficiency of officials, or dereliction of any sort in the public service. The inspectorate, however, does not wait for complaints. Not only is it on the alert to catch and sift every rumor of a fault in the service, but it is its business, by systematic and constant oversight and inspection of every branch of the army, to find out what is going wrong before anybody else does. The President is usually not far from fifty when elected, and serves five years, forming ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy


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