Origin of The Term
The word comes from the Latin colligere, which means "to collect". The term can be applied broadly to mean sorting a collection into two groups: one that will be kept and one that will be rejected. The cull is the set of items rejected during the selection process. For example, if you were to cull a collection of marbles such that only red marbles are chosen, the cull would be the set of marbles that are not red. In this example, the selection process would be culling on red marbles. The implicit meaning is that the cull (the non-red marbles) are going to be the group rejected.
The culling process is repeated until the selected group is of proper size and consistency desired. Take for example a talent contest. During the first round all the contestants compete and are evaluated. Since only a limited number of the contestants can continue to the next round of the competition, the group is culled based on the judge's opinions. Those contestants that are not selected to continue are culled from the group. During the second round, the contestants perform again, have their performances judged, and are culled again based on the judges scoring. This process continues until the finalists and eventually the winner of the contest is chosen. By more stringently applying the selection criteria on each round of the competition, the judges are able to cull the group to the single individual that they felt performed the best during the competition.
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