cull

UK/kʌl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/kʊl/

cull verb: to pick or take someone or something (from a larger group).

Verb

cull (third-person singular simple present culls, present participle culling, simple past and past participle culled)

To pick or take someone or something (from a larger group).
- 1984, cover star: JOE DALLESANDRO culled from Andy Warhol's FLESH — anonymous; sleeve notes from The Smiths' eponymous album
- Likewise, performances culled mostly from the night's winning acts - with no special guests or even much in the way of mashups, a longtime AMA specialty - provided a much-needed shot in the arm for a reeling local populace.2020 March 20, Doug Freeman, “Stuff That Works”, in The Austin Chronicle, volume 39, number 29, page 56
Synonyms:

cherry-pick
To gather, collect.
- [T]he yellowbanded bees, / Through half-open lattices / Coming in the scented breeze, / Fed thee, a child, lying alone, / With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled— […]1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “Eleanore”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 26
- Chaucer's prose Tale of Melibee […] is a dialectal homily of moral debate, exhibiting a learned store of ethical precept culled from many ancient authorities.1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 202
To select (animals, plants, etc) from a group and then kill (them) in order to reduce the numbers of the group in a controlled manner.
- […] and tropical ash (81 percent of trees culled). Excessive lean, the second major culling factor, accounted for […] 13 percent of the tropical ash cull trees, and […]1970, USDA Forest Service Research Paper PSW, issues 66-77, page 3
(broadly) To kill (an animal, person, etc) for any reason.
- Berzin was then replaced by Stiepan Garanin, who was culled for being a 'Japanese spy' (although the uneducated Garanin pleaded to his torturers that he had never even heard of Japan); Garanin was then replaced by Andrei Vyshnyevtsky, who was culled for being insufficiently murderous; Vyshnyevtsky...2002, Stephen Barber, Annihilation Zones: Far East Atrocities of the 20th Century, page 106
To lay off in order to reduce the numbers of; get rid of.
- The company culled more employees this month.
To selectively not render or process certain objects, such as polygons.
- back-face culling
- "Will cull any objects further from the camera than a given distance. When used in combination with camera frustum culling, this can be used to avoid culling nearby objects that are outside the camera frustum, but still visible in reflections. It is also useful to cull small objects far from the...2023 July 17, Blender Foundation, "Blender 3.6 Manual"

Noun (1)

cull (plural culls)

A selection.
An organized killing of selected animals.
- It seemed that the sun shone and all was right in our Blakean islands until the government began to set in motion its promised cull of badgers in an effort to control bovine TB. Salvation for brock came in the form of an online petition started by Queen guitarist Brian May, the rising costs of the...2012 December 21, Isobel Montgomery, “A year that showed the best and worst of Britain”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 2, page 31
An individual animal selected to be killed, or item of produce to be discarded.
(seafood industry) A lobster having only one claw.
A piece unfit for inclusion within a larger group; an inferior specimen.

Noun (2)

cull (plural culls)

(dialectal, slang) A fool, gullible person; a dupe.
- Follow but my counsel, and I will show you a way to empty the pocket of a queer cull without any danger of the nubbing cheat.1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 307
(UK, obsolete, slang) A man or boy.
- But you don't want no dealings with that cull. A darker villain I never did see.1997, Chris Hunt, Duval's Gold, page 58

Proper noun capitalized: Cull

Cull (plural Culls)

A surname.

cull meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

cull in Tamil

கொய், தேர்ந்தெடு, பொறுக்கியெடு, கழிவு, களைதல்

cull in Urdu

انتخاب کرنا, چھانٹنا, مار دینا

cull in Bengali

বাছাই করা, নির্বাচন করা, কমিয়ে আনা

cull in Malayalam

choose, select, pick: വകതിരിച്ചെടുക്കുക, തിരിഞ്ഞെടുക്കുക, തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കുക, നോക്കി എടുക്കുക, പലതിൽനിന്നു വേർതിരിച്ചെടുക്കുക, ശേഖരിക്കുക
slaughter, kill, destroy: നിയന്ത്രിതകൊല നടത്തുക, അറവുശാലയിലേക്കയയ്ക്കുക, കശാപ്പു ചെയ്ക, കൂട്ടക്കൊല നടത്തുക, അറുത്തുകൊല്ലുക, കൊല്ലുക

More languagesFewer languages

cull in Kannada: ಆಯು, ಹೆಕ್ಕು

Examples of cull in a sentence

"Will cull any objects further from the camera than a given distance.2023 July 17, Blender Foundation, "Blender 3.6 Manual":
It seemed that the sun shone and all was right in our Blakean islands until the government began to set in motion its promised cull of badgers in an effort to control bovine TB.2012 December 21, Isobel Montgomery, “A year that showed the best and worst of Britain”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 2, page...

All 26 example sentences with cull

Synonyms of cull

cherry-pick

Forms of cull

Verb
third-person singular present	culls
present participle	culling
past participle	culled
past	culled
Noun
plural	culls
Proper noun
plural	Culls

Past tense of cull: culled

Origin of cull

From Middle English cullen, cuilen, coilen, from Old French cuillir (“collect, gather, select”), from Latin colligō (“gather together”). Doublet of coil.

Perhaps an abbreviation of cully.

Words formed from cull

Phrases with cull

Words that rhyme with cull

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cull

What does cull mean?: Cull means to pick or take someone or something (from a larger group).
What is cull in Tamil?: Cull in Tamil is கொய், தேர்ந்தெடு, பொறுக்கியெடு. See Cull meaning in Tamil.
How do you use cull in a sentence?: "Will cull any objects further from the camera than a given distance.
What part of speech is cull?: Cull can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cull?: Cull is pronounced /kʌl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of cull?: The past tense of cull is culled.

Words near cull in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: cull (page history and authors); Cull (page history and authors); cull (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cull (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cull (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cull (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); cull (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cull.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cull.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cull. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.