# sieve

> English word · Noun · IPA /sɪv/ · frequency rank #29,084

## Definitions
1. A device with a mesh, grate, or otherwise perforated bottom to separate, in a granular material, larger particles from smaller ones, or to separate solid objects from a liquid.
2. A process, physical or abstract, that arrives at a final result by filtering out unwanted pieces of input from a larger starting set of input.
3. A kind of coarse basket.
4. A person, or their mind, that cannot remember things or is unable to keep secrets.
5. An intern who lets too many non-serious cases into the emergency room.
6. A collection of morphisms in a category whose codomain is a certain fixed object of that category, which collection is closed under precomposition by any morphism in the category.

## Etymology
From Middle English sive, syfe, from Old English sife, from Proto-West Germanic *sibi (“sieve”), from Proto-Indo-European *seyp-, *seyb- (“to pour, sieve, strain, run, drip”). Akin to German Sieb, Dutch zeef, Proto-Slavic *sito (Russian си́то (síto), сев (sev), се́ять (séjatʹ)).

## Easily confused with
- **site** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-site)
- **size** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-size)
- **sire** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-sire)
- **sine** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-sine)
- **since** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-since)
- **Steve** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-steve)
- **solve** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-solve)
- **slave** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-slave)
- **silva** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-silva)
- **stove** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-stove)
- **suede** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-suede)
- **swede** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-swede)
- **stave** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-stave)
- **suave** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-suave)
- **silver** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-silver)
- **Steven** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-steven)
- **sleeve** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-sleeve)
- **Stevie** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-stevie)
- **swerve** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sieve-vs-swerve)
- **see** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/see-vs-sieve)

## Common misspellings (6)
`iseve`, `seive`, `sieev`, `sievve`, `sivee`, `ssieve`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/sieve