cull

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /kʌl/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ʌl

From Middle English cullen, cuilen, coilen, from Old French cuillir (“collect, gather, select”), from Latin colligō (“gather together”). Doublet of coil.

cull (third-person singular simple present culls, present participle culling, simple past and past participle 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. To gather, collect.
   • Tennyson

     whitest honey in fairy gardens culled

   • 1977, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Penguin Classics, page 202:

     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.

3. To select animals from a group and then kill them in order to reduce the numbers of the group in a controlled manner.
4. (nonstandard, euphemistic) To kill (animals etc).
5. To lay off in order to reduce the size of, get rid of.

cull (plural culls)

1. A selection.
2. An organised killing of selected animals.
   • 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:

     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.

3. A piece unfit for inclusion within a larger group; an inferior specimen.

Perhaps an abbreviation of cully.

cull (plural culls)

1. (slang, dialectal) A fool, gullible person; a dupe.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society 1973, page 307:

     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.

• See also Thesaurus:dupe

• cullë

Possibly from Proto-Indo-European *g(')elt- (“womb”). Compare Sanskrit जर्त (jarta), जर्तु (jártu, “vulva”), Swedish kull (“brood, litter”), English child.

cull m

1. boy, child (Gheg)

• cullak

• (Balearic, Central, Valencian) IPA^(key): /ˈkuʎ/
• Rhymes: -uʎ

cull

1. third-person singular present indicative form of collir
2. second-person singular imperative form of collir