Cull

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Cull \kuhl\, verb:

1. to choose; select; pick.
2. to gather the choice things or parts from.
3. to collect; gather; pluck.

noun:
1. act of culling.
2. something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.

...the more connections, the more chaos, and the harder it is to cull any meaning from the seas of signal.
-- David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, 1997

Call for our chiefest men of discipline, to cull the plots of best advantage.
-- William Shakespeare, King John, 1590s

Cull entered English in the 1300s as a verb derived from the Latin colligere meaning "gather together" or "collect." It was another 300 years before the noun form of cull entered the language.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com