sift

/sɪft/

sift verb: to sieve or strain (something).

Verb

sift (third-person singular simple present sifts, present participle sifting, simple past and past participle sifted)

(transitive) To sieve or strain (something).
(transitive) To separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving.
(archaic, dated, transitive) To scrutinize (someone or something) carefully so as to find the truth.
- As neere as I could ſift him on that argument,
  On ſome apparant danger ſeene in him,
  Aym‘d at your Highneſſe, no inueterate malice.1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...
- But if we still carry on our sifting humour, and ask, What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience ? this implies a new question.1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral, London: Oxford University Press, published 1973, § 28
(transitive) [with through] To carefully go through a set of objects, or a collection of information, in order to find something.
- Sifting through the work of great orators like Philostratus and Quintilian they identify numerous examples of classical irony, metaphor, comparison, etc. which are missing in Paul.1996, Timothy B. Savage, Power Through Weakness: Paul's Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 70
- Britain’s police are especially zealous. Officers spend thousands of hours sifting through potentially offensive posts and arrest 30 people a day. Among those collared were a man who ranted about immigration on Facebook and a couple who criticised their daughter’s primary school.2025 May 15, “Europe’s free-speech problem”, in The Economist
(dated, transitive) To move data records up in memory to make space to insert further records.

Noun

sift (plural sifts)

An act of sifting.

Proper noun capitalized: SIFT

SIFT

(abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of scale-invariant feature transform.
(US, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Selection Instrument Flight Training.

sift meaning in Telugu, Assamese, Tagalog and Malay

sift in Telugu

to examine (something) carefully: గాలించు gāliñcu
to sieve or strain (something): గాలించు gāliñcu
to separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving: గాలించు gāliñcu

sift in Assamese

to sieve or strain (something): চালা sala, চলা sola

sift in Tagalog

to sieve or strain (something): salain

sift in Malay

to sieve or strain (something): ayak

More languagesFewer languages

sift in Persian: بیختن bixtan
sift in Thai: กลั่นกรอง glàn-grɔɔng, ไตร่ตรอง dtrài-dtrɔɔng, วินิจฉัย wí-nít-chǎi, กรอง grɔɔng

Examples of sift in a sentence

It immediately occurred to him to sift her on the subject of Isabella and Theodore.1764, Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, Strawberry Hill Press:
Caldwell’s effects, to ascertain if there is any clew to a motive either for suicide or murder—sift the thing to the bottom.”1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 108:
Let them take the testimony they had heard and sift it impartially.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 162:

All 19 example sentences with sift

Forms of sift

Verb
third-person singular present	sifts
present participle	sifting
past participle	sifted
past	sifted
Noun
plural	sifts

Past tense of sift: sifted

Origin of sift

From Middle English syften, from Old English siftan, from Proto-West Germanic *siftijan.

Words formed from sift

Words that rhyme with sift

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sift

What does sift mean?: Sift means to sieve or strain (something).
What is sift in Telugu?: Sift in Telugu is గాలించు (gāliñcu). See Sift meaning in Telugu.
How do you use sift in a sentence?: It immediately occurred to him to sift her on the subject of Isabella and Theodore.
What part of speech is sift?: Sift can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce sift?: Sift is pronounced /sɪft/.
What is the past tense of sift?: The past tense of sift is sifted.

Words near sift in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: sift (page history and authors); SIFT (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-sift.ogg.

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