Word.ws English Dictionary

separating the wheat from the chaff

separating the wheat from the chaff is the present participle and gerund 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 separating the wheat from the chaff

What is separating the wheat from the chaff the present participle and gerund of?
Separating the wheat from the chaff is the present participle and gerund of separate the wheat from the chaff.

Words near separating the wheat from the chaff in the dictionary

  1. separating discs
  2. separating funnel
  3. separating funnels
  4. separating out
  5. separating the men from the boys
  6. separating the wheat from the chaff
  7. separatings
  8. separatio leprosorum
  9. separation
  10. separation allowance
  11. separation allowances

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: separating 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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