Culling
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The act by which things are culled; the process of selecting for acceptance or removal. countable, uncountable
"It is he who has done everything the club have asked of him since his arrival, including overseeing the brutal culling of many of the club's legends - Luis Suarez was thrown away in a phone call which, by all accounts, lasted less than 90 seconds."
- 2 Anything separated or selected from a mass. countable, uncountable
- 3 The theft of personal possessions from a carriage during a horse race. UK, countable, obsolete, uncountable
"Culling is performed during races by stepping up on a carriage during the time the horses are coming in, and snatching reticules, silk bags, &c., from the seats of the carriage, the attention of the ladies being drawn to the winning horse."
- 1 present participle and gerund of cull form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"These models, or "population viability analyses," assess the risk of extinction over time based on computational iterations that play out how a herd may expand and contract (with births and deaths) and genetically evolve given the interplay of the number, age and sex of animals in the herd; reproductive traits; influx of new genetics vs. inbreeding; management actions (culling/hunting); and potential effects of random events such as disease, drought and fire."
Related phrases
More for "culling"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.