Cull Meaning
/kʌl/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
verbTo pick or take someone or something (from a larger group).
verbTo gather, collect.
Sentence Examples
I breed betta fish and cull my unwanted stock by feeding them to my oscar.
There is no reason to cull pigs right now.
CEFR Practice Quiz
Farmers must regularly ____ the weak animals from the herd.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I breed betta fish and ____ my unwanted stock by feeding them to my oscar.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English cullen, cuilen, coilen, from Old French cuillir (“collect, gather, select”), from Latin colligō (“gather together”). Doublet of coil.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"[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:
"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:
""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":
"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:
"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:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
Farmers must regularly ____ the weak animals from the herd.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I breed betta fish and ____ my unwanted stock by feeding them to my oscar.