cull
/kʌl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.96 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To select (animals, plants, etc) from a group and then kill (them) in order to reduce the numbers of the group in a controlled manner.
verb
To lay off in order to reduce the numbers of; get rid of.
noun
A selection.
Example Sentences
- "1984, cover star: JOE DALLESANDRO culled from Andy Warhol's FLESH — anonymous; sleeve notes from The Smiths' eponymous album"
- "Likewise, performances culled mostly from the night's winning acts - with no special guests or even much in the way of mashups, a longtime AMA specialty - provided a much-needed shot in the arm for a reeling local populace."
- "[T]he yellowbanded bees, / Through half-open lattices / Coming in the scented breeze, / Fed thee, a child, lying alone, / With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled— […]"
- "Chaucer's prose Tale of Melibee […] is a dialectal homily of moral debate, exhibiting a learned store of ethical precept culled from many ancient authorities."
- "There had been an effort a few years back by an artist no one had then heard of—a British New Yorker named Craig Ward, who had been inspired by a friend's photograph of the bacteria in her son's handprint to take to the New York subways to cull bacteria for himself. He'd brought back the microorganism samples in petri dishes that he filled with a jellylike substance that would continue to feed the bacteria, and let the human stories ripen in the heat throughout the summer."
- "[…] and tropical ash (81 percent of trees culled). Excessive lean, the second major culling factor, accounted for […] 13 percent of the tropical ash cull trees, and […]"
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kʌl/
- British English: /kʌl/