Sieve
[sɪv]
Definition
(noun.) a strainer for separating lumps from powdered material or grading particles.
(verb.) distinguish and separate out; 'sift through the job candidates'.
(verb.) check and sort carefully; 'sift the information'.
Editor: Lyle--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) A utensil for separating the finer and coarser parts of a pulverized or granulated substance from each other. It consist of a vessel, usually shallow, with the bottom perforated, or made of hair, wire, or the like, woven in meshes.
(n.) A kind of coarse basket.
Typed by Dido
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. Bolt.
Typist: Ora
Definition
n. a vessel with a bottom of woven hair or wire to separate the fine part of anything from the coarse: a person who cannot keep a secret.—v.t. to put through a sieve: to sift.
Edited by Constantine
Unserious Contents or Definition
To dream of a sieve, foretells some annoying transaction will soon be made by you, which will probably be to your loss. If the meshes are too small, you will have the chance to reverse a decision unfavorable to yourself. If too large, you will eventually lose what you have recently acquired.
Typist: Shelley
Examples
- Everybody was walking about St Peter's and the Vatican on somebody else's cork legs, and straining every visible object through somebody else's sieve. Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit.
- If the devil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won't find one. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
- His mother's fortune (seven hundred a year) fell to him when he came of age, and ran through him, as it might be through a sieve. Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone.
- The log-cabin we were in had lost the roof entirely on one side, and on the other it was hardly better then a sieve. Ulysses S. Grant. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.
- In the _making_ of _shot_, the old method was to pour the melted metal through a sieve, and allow it to drop from a tower 180 feet or more in height. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- Powder very fine, mix, and pass through a sieve. William K. David. Secrets of Wise Men, Chemists and Great Physicians.
Checked by Debs