0 past simple and past participle of winnow
1 to blow the chaff (= the outer coverings) from grain before it can be used as food
A list of 15 applicants has been winnowed down to three.
a winnowing process
The initial story is the same as in simple one-step selection, but after the initial variation is winnowed down, the process is repeated.
After the weaker candidates are winnowed, the surviving candidates remain in the race until one candidate pulls sufficiently ahead to secure the nomination.
The major candidates are winnowed to one during the primary season.
In the detection step, the suspects are winnowed by checking the spelling variations of each for relatedness to context.
However, should the group selected as cyclic show some distinctive behaviour pattern, we might well conclude that the basis for selection had winnowed out a non-random group.
I think that many of these complaints would be winnowed out and put to sleep and the officer's reputation and his own personal feelings of self-confidence would be considerably improved.
It is threshed and winnowed after being dried for approximately one week.
By this simple process, corn may be cut down, winnowed, ground, dried, and baked within half an hour.