Pronunciations (4)
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/ˈfɪltə/
Pronunciation notes
- Received-Pronunciation
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/ˈfɪltɚ/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
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ˈfɪltə
Pronunciation notes
- GB
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ˈfɪltɚ
Pronunciation notes
- US
Noun
A device which separates a suspended, dissolved, or particulate matter from a fluid, solution, or other substance; any device that separates one substance from another.
- Examples
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Then add four drops of crocodile semen, and pass the mixture through a filter.
Electronics or software that separates unwanted signals (for example noise) from wanted signals or that attenuates selected frequencies.
Any item, mechanism, device, or procedure that acts to separate or isolate.
- Examples
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He runs an email filter to catch the junk mail.
More examples (1)
In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.
Self-restraint in speech.
Usage- Figurative
- Examples
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He's got no filter, and he's always offending people as a result.
These were women with enormous feelings and, almost always, no filter to mediate their expression of them.
A non-empty upper set (of a partially ordered set) which is closed under binary infima (a.k.a. meets).
- Examples
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More examples (2)
The collection of cofinite subsets of ℝ is a filter under inclusion: it includes the intersection of every pair of its members, and includes every superset of every cofinite set.
If (1) the universal set (here, the set of natural numbers) were called a "large" set, (2) the superset of any "large" set were also a "large" set, and (3) the intersection of a pair of "large" sets were also a "large" set, then the set of all "large" sets would form a filter.
A translucent object placed in the light path of a camera to remove certain wavelengths (colors), or a computer program that simulates such an effect.
An appearance-altering digital image effect.
- Examples
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He don't need no filter posting pictures!
Verb
To sort, sift, or isolate.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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This strainer should filter out the large particles.
More examples (1)
“You have probably never seen anything like this before, Mr. Toler. It is baleen, or if you prefer it, whalebone, taken from the mouth of the bowhead whale. It is used by the whale to filter its food.”
Receivers often incorporate digital equalisers to 'mop up' slight intersymbol interference after initial filtering at the receiver.
More examples (1)
But fans’ emotions are no longer filtered through ticket or album sales; they’re heard directly, constantly, at all hours, on all the platforms people visit to generate and extinguish bad feelings in a never-ending cycle.
To diffuse; to cause to be less concentrated or focused.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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The leaves of the trees filtered the light.
To pass through a filter or to act as though passing through a filter.
Usage- Intransitive
- Examples
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The water filtered through the rock and soil.
To move slowly or gradually; to come or go a few at a time.
Usage- Intransitive
- Examples
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The crowd filtered into the theater.
To ride a motorcycle between lanes on a road
Usage- Intransitive
- Examples
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I can skip past all the traffic on my bike by filtering.
To be discouraged where a connoisseur or hardcore fan would not.
Usage- Derogatory
- Intransitive
- Slang
- Examples
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Most people get filtered by that episode.
Noun
device that removes something from whatever passes through it
- Broader terms
an electrical device that alters the frequency spectrum of signals passing through it
- Broader terms
Verb
remove by passing through a filter
- Broader terms
- Examples
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filter out the impurities
pass through
- Examples
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Water permeates sand easily
run or flow slowly, as in drops or in an unsteady stream
- Examples
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water trickled onto the lawn from the broken hose
reports began to dribble in