cull
A selection.
Noun
- A selection.
- An organized killing of selected animals.
- 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 individual animal selected to be killed, or item of produce to be discarded.
- A lobster having only one claw.
- A piece unfit for inclusion within a larger group; an inferior specimen.
Origin
From Middle English cullen, cuilen, coilen, from Old French cuillir (“collect, gather, select”), from Latin colligō (“gather together”). Doublet of coil.
Forms
Noun dialectal, slang
- A 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:
- A 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:
Origin
Perhaps an abbreviation of cully.
Forms
Derived
Verb
- 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
Synonyms: cherry-pick
- To gather, collect.
- [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...
- 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...
- To select animals from a group and then kill them in order to reduce the numbers of the group in a controlled manner.
- To kill (animals, etc).
- To lay off in order to reduce the size of, get rid of.
- To selectively not render or process certain objects, such as polygons.
- back-face culling
- "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...