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What is the difference between sift and sieve?

sift | sieve |

As verbs the difference between sift and sieve

is that sift is to sieve or strain (something) while sieve is to strain, sift or sort using a sieve.

As a noun sieve is

a device to separate, in a granular material, larger particles from smaller ones, or to separate solid objects from a liquid.

sift

English

Verb

  • To sieve or strain (something).
  • To separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving.
  • To examine (something) carefully.
  • * 1748 . David Hume. Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. § 28.
    • But if we still carry on our sifting humour, and ask, What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience ? this implies a new question.
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1764 , author= , title= , pageurl=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/696/696-h/696-h.htm , page= , publisher=}}
    It immediately occurred to him to sift her on the subject of Isabella and Theodore.

    Derived terms

    * sifter

    Anagrams

    * *

    sieve

    English

    (wikipedia sieve)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A device to , in a granular material, larger particles from smaller ones, or to separate solid objects from a liquid.
    • Use the sieve to get the pasta from the water.
  • A process, physical or abstract, that arrives at a final result by filtering out unwanted pieces of input from a larger starting set of input.
  • * {{quote-web
    • , year = 2010 , author = Luke Mastin , title = 20TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS - ROBINSON AND MATIYASEVICH , site = www.storyofmathematics.com , url = http://www.storyofmathematics.com/20th_robinson.html , accessdate = 2013-09-08 }}
    Among, [sic ] his other achievements, Matiyasevich and his colleague Boris Stechkin also developed an interesting “visual sieve ” for prime numbers, which effectively “crosses out” all the composite numbers, leaving only the primes.
    Given a list of consecutive numbers starting at 1, the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm will find all of the prime numbers.
  • (obsolete) A kind of coarse basket.
    • (Simmonds)

    Derived terms

    * * * *

    Verb

    (siev)
  • To strain, sift or sort using a sieve.