Word.ws English Dictionary

bolt to the bran

bolt to the bran verb: to examine thoroughly, so as to separate or discover everything important.

Verb

bolt to the bran (third-person singular simple present bolts to the bran, present participle bolting to the bran, simple past and past participle bolted to the bran)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To examine thoroughly, so as to separate or discover everything important.
    • This boults the matter fairly to the bran.1735, Walter Harte, An Essay on Reason
    • The report of the committee was examined and sifted and bolted to the bran.1795–1797, Edmund Burke, “(please specify |letter=1 to 4)”, in [Letters on a Regicide Peace], London: [Rivington]

Forms of bolt to the bran

third-person singular presentbolts to the bran
present participlebolting to the bran
past participlebolted to the bran
pastbolted to the bran

Origin of bolt to the bran

See bolt (“sieve”).

Questions about bolt to the bran

What does bolt to the bran mean?
Bolt to the bran means to examine thoroughly, so as to separate or discover everything important.
What part of speech is bolt to the bran?
Bolt to the bran is a verb.
What is the past tense of bolt to the bran?
The past tense of bolt to the bran is bolted to the bran.

Words near bolt to the bran in the dictionary

  1. bolt out of the blue
  2. bolt rope
  3. bolt ropes
  4. bolt thrower
  5. bolt throwers
  6. bolt to the bran
  7. bolt upright
  8. bolt-action
  9. bolt-actions
  10. bolt-hole
  11. bolt-holes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bolt to the bran (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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