weed out

phrasal verb·1 sense·particle out

Usefulness

Meanings

1

Remove unwanted items selectively

Why “out”? Pushing outward to eliminate. What is removed is sent away.

The new policy weeded out poor performers.
The new policy removed workers whose work was not good enough.
The test weeded out weak applications.
The test removed applications that were not good enough.

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The new policy weeded out poor performers. What does it mean?

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