cull

present singular third person culls · participle present culling · participle past culled · past culled

1. To pick or take someone or something (from a larger group).

   1984, cover star: JOE DALLESANDRO culled from Andy Warhol's FLESH — anonymous; sleeve notes from The Smiths' eponymous album

   2 more examples

   where Cyrus lay in ambuſh with ſix hundred men, which he had culled out for that purpoſe

   1653, Georges de Scudéry, translated by Gent, F. G., Artamenes, or the Grand Cyrus, London, page 150

   Likewise, performances culled mostly from the night's winning acts - with no special guests or even much in the way of mashups, a longtime AMA specialty - provided a much-needed shot in the arm for a reeling local populace.

   2020 March 20, Doug Freeman, “Stuff That Works”, in The Austin Chronicle, volume 39, number 29, page 56

   Synonyms: cherry-pick

2. To gather, collect.

   Chaucer's prose Tale of Melibee […] is a dialectal homily of moral debate, exhibiting a learned store of ethical precept culled from many ancient authorities.

   1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 202

   2 more examples

   [T]he yellowbanded bees, / Through half-open lattices / Coming in the scented breeze, / Fed thee, a child, lying alone, / With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled— […]

   1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “Eleanore”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 26

   There had been an effort a few years back by an artist no one had then heard of—a British New Yorker named Craig Ward, who had been inspired by a friend's photograph of the bacteria in her son's handprint to take to the New York subways to cull bacteria for himself. He'd brought back the microorganism samples in petri dishes that he filled with a jellylike substance that would continue to feed the bacteria, and let the human stories ripen in the heat throughout the summer.

   2018, Courtney Maum, Touch, page 109

3. To select (animals, plants, etc) from a group and then kill (them) in order to reduce the numbers of the group in a controlled manner.

   […] and tropical ash (81 percent of trees culled). Excessive lean, the second major culling factor, accounted for […] 13 percent of the tropical ash cull trees, and […]

   1970, USDA Forest Service Research Paper PSW, issues 66-77, page 3

4. broadlyTo kill (an animal, person, etc) for any reason.

   1 more example

   Berzin was then replaced by Stiepan Garanin, who was culled for being a 'Japanese spy' (although the uneducated Garanin pleaded to his torturers that he had never even heard of Japan); Garanin was then replaced by Andrei Vyshnyevtsky, who was culled for being insufficiently murderous; Vyshnyevtsky was then replaced by Ivan Nikishov, who was culled for no reason at all, just after Stalin had slyly decorated him with the 'Order of the Hero of the Soviet Union'; […]

   2002, Stephen Barber, Annihilation Zones: Far East Atrocities of the 20th Century, page 106

5. To lay off in order to reduce the numbers of; get rid of.

   The company culled more employees this month.

6. computer graphicsTo selectively not render or process certain objects, such as polygons.

   back-face culling

   1 more example

   "Will cull any objects further from the camera than a given distance. When used in combination with camera frustum culling, this can be used to avoid culling nearby objects that are outside the camera frustum, but still visible in reflections. It is also useful to cull small objects far from the camera."

   2023 July 17, Blender Foundation, "Blender 3.6 Manual"

plural culls

1. A selection.
2. An organized killing of selected animals.

   1 more example

   It seemed that the sun shone and all was right in our Blakean islands until the government began to set in motion its promised cull of badgers in an effort to control bovine TB. Salvation for brock came in the form of an online petition started by Queen guitarist Brian May, the rising costs of the programme and the weather.

   2012 December 21, Isobel Montgomery, “A year that showed the best and worst of Britain”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 2, page 31

3. agricultureAn individual animal selected to be killed, or item of produce to be discarded.
4. seafood industryA lobster having only one claw.
5. A piece unfit for inclusion within a larger group; an inferior specimen.

plural culls

1. dialectalslangA fool, gullible person; a dupe.

   Follow but my counsel, and I will show you a way to empty the pocket of a queer cull without any danger of the nubbing cheat.

   1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 307

2. UKobsoleteslangA man or boy.

   But you don't want no dealings with that cull. A darker villain I never did see.

   1997, Chris Hunt, Duval's Gold, page 58

plural Culls

1. A surname.