Meaning
To tell the valuable part from the worthless part; to sort good people, ideas, or material from inferior ones when the two are mixed together and not easily told apart at a glance. It is frequently used of selection processes such as trials, auditions, shortlists, and the filtering of large quantities of information. Neutral to slightly formal; typically describes competitive selection or the filtering of information. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image comes from winnowing, the ancient farming step in which threshed grain is tossed into the air so the wind carries off the light, inedible husks while the heavy grain falls back to the threshing floor. The word 'chaff' descends from Old English ceaf, and Etymonline records that English writers were already using it figuratively for 'worthless material' by the late 14th century. The full separating metaphor is biblical: John the Baptist's image of the winnowing fork in Matthew 3:12, where the wheat is gathered into the barn and the chaff burned, is the passage most often cited, with kindred images in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah. Writing Explained and similar references treat the Bible as the direct source of the English expression. The precise year the modern fixed wording crystallized is not pinned down in the standard references; the metaphor itself is ancient and the figurative use of chaff is medieval.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- divide the wheat from the chaff
- separate the grain from the chaff
- separate the wheat and the chaff
- sort the wheat from the chaff
Usage Examples
- The first round of interviews exists mainly to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- Reader reviews help sort the wheat from the chaff when you are choosing a hotel.
- A crisis separates the wheat from the chaff, revealing which colleagues you can actually rely on.