What is "sift"

Usage examples of "sift".

A moment later, the Indexer relaxed from sifting through the agate gravel.

He had a tendency to jumble one topic in with another as things occurred to him, and a good deal of it was profane, but Alec managed to sift out enough to set his mind at rest by the time they drew alongside the sleek hull of the Grampus.

One day they might spend several hours poring over scrolls of royal lineage or sifting through the gems in the chest from the mantelpiece, Alec wide-eyed as Seregil extolled their properties and how to value them.

World War II, nothing yet had been discovered any safer than the old quinine and atabrine treatment, and Raft was sifting the jungle lore now to make sure there might not be some truth in the old Indio knowledge, hidden behind masks of devil-worship and magic.

Jigsaws, cards, roulette counters, poker chips, spillikins, marbles, yarrow stalks, dice, jacks, Trivial Pursuit wedges, bridge score-sheets, discarded Pictionary doodles, Scrabble tiles, bits of unidentifiable plastic and shards of bakelite, wood and metal formed a jumbled compost capable of engaging a dedicated housekeeper for several months of full-time sifting, cataloguing and sorting into the correct boxes.

What we know of the Titans is drawn from short summaries in the Theogany of Hesiod and the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, and from brief references that must be sifted from works devoted to other, often nonmythological subjects.

All around Lin the duckers and divers of Aspic filled the streets on their way to scrape for money, stealing or begging or selling or sifting through the piles of rubbish which punctuated the street.

Lin the duckers and divers of Aspic filled the streets on their way to scrape for money, stealing or begging or selling or sifting through the piles of rubbish which punctuated the street.

They wore dusters and goggles to protect them from the alkali of the Llano Estacado, which blew into the open vehicle, sticking to their exposed skin and sifting down inside the scarves around their necks.

Wheat, I gather, is tolerated only grudgingly, deemed spiritually unworthy but somehow necessary: it undergoes a rigorous fivefold sifting and tenfold milling, accompanied by special meditations, before it is made into bread.

Arson investigators and bomb technicians from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms are sifting through the rubble in an effort to -- John Michael Fowles was disappointed that the article was on page three, but decided not to show it.

Krispos and his generals questioned haler survivors, trying to sift fragments of order from catastrophe.

I sifted the actions of the magicians, and of the man who had accosted me outside the jacal of the sick girl, and of many other men and women I had known, seeking for a key that would unlock all hearts.

The sifting, seeping flow of ash and lapilli had steadily risen higher and higher, lifting a chained dog with it.

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me, -- Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet That advise me of more than they bring, -- repeat Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, -- Teach me the terms of silence, -- preach me The passion of patience, -- Sift me, -- impeach me, -- And there, oh there As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, Pray me a myriad prayer.