sift
Americanverb (used with object)
-
sifts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sifted,
past participle, past
-
sifting
present participle
-
to separate and retain the coarse parts of (flour, ashes, etc.) with a sieve.
-
to scatter or sprinkle through or by means of a sieve.
to sift sugar onto cake.
-
to separate by or as if by a sieve.
-
to examine closely.
The detectives are still sifting the evidence.
- Synonyms:
- probe, search, inspect, scrutinize, sort
-
to question closely.
verb (used without object)
-
sifts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sifted,
past participle, past
-
sifting
present participle
-
to sift something.
-
to pass or fall through or as if through a sieve.
verb
-
(tr) to sieve (sand, flour, etc) in order to remove the coarser particles
-
to scatter (something) over a surface through a sieve
-
(tr) to separate with or as if with a sieve; distinguish between
-
(tr) to examine minutely
to sift evidence
-
(intr) to move as if through a sieve
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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sifternoun
-
outsiftverb (used with object)
-
presiftverb (used with object)
-
resiftverb (used with object)
-
unsiftedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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siftsimple
-
siftssimple
-
have siftedperfect
-
has siftedperfect
-
am siftingprogressive
-
are siftingprogressive
-
is siftingprogressive
-
have been siftingperfect progressive
-
has been siftingperfect progressive
Past
-
siftedsimple
-
had siftedperfect
-
was siftingprogressive
-
were siftingprogressive
-
had been siftingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sift
before 900; Middle English siften, Old English siftan; cognate with Dutch, Middle Low German siften; akin to sieve
Explanation
To bake a cake, you sift the flour to get out the lumps. When you sift, you separate out one thing from another. When you sort through the mail looking for the bills or go through your photos to find that shot of your dog, that’s sifting, too. Detectives sift through piles of evidence when investigating crimes, and you might sift through the hundred applications you get from drummers eager to join your band, to find Ms. Right. When you're at the beach, you can sift sand through your fingers, and you might see big machines that sift the sand to clean it.
Vocabulary lists containing sift
Stairway To Leaven: Baking Vocabulary
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Holes
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Ender's Game
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
At a gleaming new factory in China's central hinterland, masked workers in white uniform season and sift through mounds of latiao, a longtime popular snack that has found hungry fans overseas.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
With record youth unemployment and vacancies half what they were in recent years employers are increasingly turning to AI to sift through the huge volume of applications and favouring online interviews over in person.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
She remembers scooping up what remained of her artwork and watching it sift through her fingers, the porcelain broken and changed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Just add water, sift in your matcha and run the matcha cycle.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026
Tiny snow crystals sift down through the moonlight.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
AI sifts through tens of millions of records of data for marketers, who then create AI agents that carry out complex marketing tasks.
From Barron's ● Feb. 12, 2026
An artificial intelligence system donated by Microsoft then sifts through the millions of records to pull up relevant documents at 21 different stations throughout the exhibit.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 5, 2026
In an office in central London, Signify's small team quietly sifts through thousands of posts.
From BBC ● Dec. 3, 2025
The Policy Lab sifts through all that data, evaluating some 500 markers to generate a list of individuals and families that its model predicts to be at high risk of becoming homeless.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2025
Ambrose sifts through his many pockets before producing two sleek silver phones.
From "Dragons in a Bag" by Zetta Elliott
However when the team sifted through their data, they found that at certain wavelengths, the object's light simply disappeared.
From Barron's ● Aug. 12, 2026
In an abandoned luxury apartment in the Syrian capital Damascus, armed men dressed in military fatigues sifted through designer clothes and documents.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
We sifted through evidence and testimony to figure out how billionaires Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman ended up in a courtroom.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
As Hanse sifted through archives, he soon made a surprising discovery: rare aerial photographs of Aronimink’s early days that diverged from old drawings of the grounds.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
He went back to his chair, and Abra sifted flour over the steak and pounded the meat with a big knife.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
All of this means much more time sifting through silica and wielding her tiny enamel brush.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
Other images showed rescue workers with flashlights sifting through rubble.
From Barron's ● Aug. 1, 2026
More than 60 different groups of interns huddled around tables, sifting through income statements, newspaper articles and an org chart.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
They are getting better at sifting data into meaningful signals and meaningless noise.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 24, 2026
Today the women were sifting through photos of possible matches.
From "Amal Unbound" by Aisha Saeed
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
