cherry-pick

Verb

cherry-pick (third-person singular simple present cherry-picks, present participle cherry-picking, simple past and past participle cherry-picked)

1. (idiomatic) To pick out the best or most desirable items from a list or group, especially to obtain some advantage or to present something in the best possible light.
   • Screeners can help you cherry-pick a promising group of stocks that meet your exact specifications.2005, “The PC Way to Pick Winners”, in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, volume 59, number 4, page 44
   • "We're not offering you a chance to cherry-pick the Caerphilly Zoo to fill in the gaps in your own collection.2008, Donna Andrews, The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, page 98

   Synonyms:

   cull

2. (broadly, rhetoric) To select only evidence which supports an argument, and reject or ignore contradictory evidence.
   • From all the available statistics, the politician cherry-picked only those that backed up his ideas.
   • The reason for this concentration is to attempt to alleviate the problems of fragmentation which usually accompany the study of retailing, particularly at the end of the early period, and has so often happened in the past, to curtail the temptation to 'cherry-pick' the best evidence from a wide...1999, Nicholas Alexander, Gary Akehurst, The Emergence of Modern Retailing, 1750-1950, page 38
3. (US, idiomatic) To position oneself near the opponent's goal to attempt to receive an errant or intentional pass for an easy score, as in basketball or versions of soccer where offsides are not enforced.
4. (US, idiomatic) To broadcast selected programming from another network.
   • Those stations that will send CNN tapes of their local and regional news for CNN to cherry-pick from, in turn will be allowed to cherry-pick themselves.1980, Television/radio age, volume 28, page 80
5. In source control, to commit selected changes from one branch to another.