Filter Meaning

"Then add four drops of crocodile semen, and pass the mixture through a filter." — 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 152:

"In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters." — 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:

"These were women with enormous feelings and, almost always, no filter to mediate their expression of them." — 2026 January 30, Judy Berman, “Catherine O’Hara Portrayed the Vain and Delusional With a Radical Lack of Vanity”, in TIME, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2026:

"He don't need no filter posting pictures!" — 2013, Patent Pending, “All-Star Hipster”, in Brighter:

"“You have probably never seen anything like this before, Mr. Toler. It is baleen, or if you prefer it, whalebone, taken from the mouth of the bowhead whale. It is used by the whale to filter its food.”" — 1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 5, in The Subtle Minotaur: