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say it: WIN-oh
winnow is a verb and noun meaning "separate the chaff from grain by using air currents". It carries 5 recorded senses.
separate the chaff from grain by using air currents
“She stood there winnowing grain all day in the field”
select desirable parts from a group or list
“cull out the interesting letters from the poet's correspondence”
“winnow the finalists from the long list of applicants”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for winnow come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.