sifting

3 definitions • 4 examples

present participle of

to put flour, sugar, etc. through a sieve (= wire net shaped like a bowl) to break up large pieces:

When the cake is cooked, sift some icing sugar over the top of it.

to make a close examination of all the parts of something in order to find something or to separate what is useful from what is not:

The police are sifting the evidence very carefully to try and find the guilty person.

After my father's death, I had to sift through all his papers.

The police are trying to sift out the genuine warnings from all the hoax calls they have received.