sift

verb

1. (transitive)To sieve or strain (something).
2. (transitive)To separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving.
3. (archaic, dated, transitive)To examine (something) carefully.

   “As neere as I could ſift him on that argument, On ſome apparant danger ſeene in him, Aym‘d at your Highneſſe, no inueterate malice.”

   “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.”

   “It immediately occurred to him to sift her on the subject of Isabella and Theodore.”

   ““I fear that there is something more serious than accident here, Mr. Brently,” said the captain. “I wish that you would make a personal and very careful examination of Mr. Caldwell’s effects, to ascertain if there is any clew to a motive either for suicide or murder—sift the thing to the bottom.””

   “Never, he said, in the course of his long experience, had he known a charge of murder rest on slighter evidence. Not only was it entirely circumstantial, but the greater part of it was practically unproved. Let them take the testimony they had heard and sift it impartially.”

4. (transitive)To examine (something) carefully.

   “Sifting through the work of great orators like Philostratus and Quintilian they identify numerous examples of classical irony, metaphor, comparison, etc. which are missing in Paul.”

   “Britain’s police are especially zealous. Officers spend thousands of hours sifting through potentially offensive posts and arrest 30 people a day. Among those collared were a man who ranted about immigration on Facebook and a couple who criticised their daughter’s primary school.”

5. (dated, transitive)To move data records up in memory to make space to insert further records.

noun

1. An act of sifting.

name

1. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of scale-invariant feature transform.
2. (US, abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of Selection Instrument Flight Training.