Word.ws English Dictionary

separated the wheat from the chaff

separated the wheat from the chaff is the simple past and past participle of separate the wheat from the chaff.

Meaning of separate the wheat from the chaff

Verb

separate the wheat from the chaff (third-person singular simple present separates the wheat from the chaff, present participle separating the wheat from the chaff, simple past and past participle separated the wheat from the chaff)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To select only that which is of value.
    • As a punishment, Zhemao and her affiliated accounts were suspended permanently. Most of her articles were deleted based on community consensus. Some Wikipedians even wrote to experts, seeking help to separate the wheat from the chaff.2022 July 13, Rachel Cheung, “A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History on Wikipedia”, in Vice, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2026

Questions about separated the wheat from the chaff

What is separated the wheat from the chaff the simple past and past participle of?
Separated the wheat from the chaff is the simple past and past participle of separate the wheat from the chaff.

Words near separated the wheat from the chaff in the dictionary

  1. separate the sheep from the goats
  2. separate the wheat from the chaff
  3. separated
  4. separated out
  5. separated the men from the boys
  6. separated the wheat from the chaff
  7. separatedly
  8. separatedness
  9. separatee
  10. separatees
  11. separately

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: separated the wheat from the chaff (page history and authors); separate the wheat from the chaff (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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Cite this entry: “separated the wheat from the chaff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/separated_the_wheat_from_the_chaff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.