cull
part of speech
verb (cull, culls, culled, culling); noun (a cull, culls)
meaning for a pupil
1) To cull animals means to kill some of them on purpose, to keep the group small or healthy. tree →
2) To cull means to choose or collect things from many sources: «facts culled from books». tree →
3) (noun) A cull is an act of killing some animals in a group. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science and nature news it is about managing animal numbers, for example deer or pests; it is often argued about. In maths problems a cull reduces a population: subtract. Phrases: «a deer cull», «culled from».
examples
- The park plans to cull some of the deer. tree →
- The farmer culled the sick hens. tree →
- The facts were culled from old newspapers. tree →
- After a cull of 40, how many of the 300 deer are left? tree →
- Many people protested against the badger cull. tree →
- She culled the best photos for the album. tree →
note
Sometimes a softer word for killing animals. Maths: a cull takes away from the number, so subtract. Not the same as «call» or «cool».
In the corpora
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «cull» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.