sift /sɪft/ BrE AmE verb [transitive]
[ Language: Old English ; Origin: siftan ]
1 . to put flour, sugar etc through a sieve or similar container in order to remove large pieces
2 . ( also sift through ) to examine information, documents etc carefully in order to find something out or decide what is important and what is not:
Police are sifting through the evidence.
sift something ↔ out phrasal verb
to separate something from other things
sift something ↔ out from
It’s hard to sift out the truth from the lies in this case.