0 past simple and past participle of sift
1 to put flour, sugar, etc. through a sieve (= wire net shaped like a bowl) to break up large pieces:
2 to make a close examination of all the parts of something in order to find something or to separate what is useful from what is not:
Nevertheless, it may be claimed that the facts collected have been carefully sifted, the references conscientiously verified, and the opposing theories honestly presented.
The entire mixture was shaken thoroughly for 5 min and sifted through a coarse sieve of 250 mm pore size mesh.
Seeds were placed on sterilized sifted river sand.
To this end, they sifted through a variety of philosophies, ancient and modern, and tailored them to their practice of distillation analysis.
The arenas were filled with clean, dry, sifted sand (particle size < 500 m) into which the experimental materials were positioned (see below).
The structure was cleaned, its contents were sifted, and profiles of the tomb were drawn.
The papers have not been ignored, but they have been sifted rather than studied in detail.
The contents of each dish were sifted through, and the number of each seed species or bead was recorded.
