Word.ws English Dictionary

winnow down

winnow down verb: to reduce the number of candidates for something by judging their quality and rejecting some.

Verb

winnow down (third-person singular simple present winnows down, present participle winnowing down, simple past and past participle winnowed down)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To reduce the number of candidates for something by judging their quality and rejecting some.

Forms of winnow down

third-person singular presentwinnows down
present participlewinnowing down
past participlewinnowed down
pastwinnowed down

Questions about winnow down

What does winnow down mean?
Winnow down means to reduce the number of candidates for something by judging their quality and rejecting some.
What part of speech is winnow down?
Winnow down is a verb.
What is the past tense of winnow down?
The past tense of winnow down is winnowed down.

Words near winnow down in the dictionary

  1. Winnisquam
  2. Winnister
  3. winnitude
  4. winnonish
  5. winnow
  6. winnow down
  7. winnow grain from chaff
  8. winnow sheet
  9. winnow sheets
  10. winnow the wheat from the chaff
  11. winnow up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: winnow down (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:

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