filter

CEFRB1

/ˈfɪltə/

verb · noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
verb
To remove unwanted parts from a liquid, gas, or group.
02
verb
Extra detail
Any item, mechanism, device, or procedure that acts to separate or isolate.

Examples

In swimming pools, water is continuously pumped through a filter.
Put the coffee in the filter and let the water run through.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 5
Parts of speech: 2
Citations: 5
Synonyms: 1

Deep Dive

verb

Extra meaning

Electronics or software that separates unwanted signals (for example noise) from wanted signals or that attenuates selected frequencies.

noun

Extra meanings

A device which separates a suspended, dissolved, or particulate matter from a fluid, solution, or other substance; any device that separates one substance from another.
A non-empty upper set (of a partially ordered set) which is closed under binary infima (a.k.a. meets).

More examples

In context

I don't like filter coffee.
He runs an email filter to catch the junk mail.
He's got no filter, and he's always offending people as a result.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

We must replace the dirty water blank to ensure our drinking water is safe.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

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

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Origin

verb

From Middle English filtre, from Medieval Latin filtrum (compare also Old French feutre (“felt; filter”)), from Frankish *filtir, from Proto-West Germanic *felt. See felt. Doublet of phin.

Deep Dive

verb

noun

More examples

Related

Quick test

We must replace the dirty water blank— to ensure our drinking water is safe.

Nearby

Origin

verb

We must replace the dirty water blank to ensure our drinking water is safe.