[f. CULL v.1 + -ING1.]
1. The action of selecting or picking.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 107. Cullynge, or owte schesynge, separacio, segregacio.
1663. Flagellum, or O. Cromwell (1672), 70. The House being thus purged, as they called it … the remaining Juncto of his Culling … passed an Ordinance for Tryal of the King.
1878. Newcomb, Pop. Astron., II. v. 225. This culling-out is called Selective Absorption.
2. concr. The proceeds or residue of culling; a selection; pl. portions drafted out.
1692. A. Walker, Acc. Icon Basilike, 32 (L.). That the Lord Fairfax would take anything out of the cabinet, and send up the cullings to the parliament.
1780. Brodhead, in Sparks, Corr. Amer. Rev. (1853), II. 449. The remaining Continentals are the cullings of our troops, and I cannot promise anything clever from them.
1865. Reader, 5 Aug., 144/3. A passage like the following reads more like a culling from the Oxford ‘Lives of the Saints.’
1611. Cotgr., Brebis de rebut, an old or diseased sheepe thats not worth keeping; wee call such a one, a drape, or culling.
1627. Drayton, Nymphidia, vi. 1496 (L.). My cullings I put off, or for the chapman feed.
1652. S. Clarke, Lives (1677), 334. To leave the cullen sheep in a hard condition.
a. 1796. Vancouver, in A. Young, Ess. Agric. (1813), II. 284. An assemblage of the refuse stock, and cullings of the adjacent … counties.
1879. Miss Jackson, Shropshire Word-bk., Cullings, the residue, as of a flock of fatted sheep, of which the best have been picked out.
4. Comb. Culling-iron, a long-handled slender hammer, with which the mature oysters are separated from the object on which they have been deposited.
1891. Scribner’s Mag., Oct., 482.
