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PlainSpell

sift

/sɪft/verb, noun

sift is spelled S-I-F-T: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.0 times per million words in written English, the 28,214th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a verb, sift means “To sieve or strain (something)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).

How many letters and syllables are in sift?

Letters4: S-I-F-T
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing1.0 times per million words; the 28,214th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is sift?

Sift appears 1.0 times per million words in written English, the 28,214th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce sift?

  • /sɪft/

Sift has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-sift.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with sift?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as sift.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: fist.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of sift

  • sifts present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • sifting participle, present
  • sifted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does sift mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To sieve or strain (something).

  2. 2

    To separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving.

  3. 3

    archaicdatedTo scrutinize (someone or something) carefully so as to find the truth.

  4. 4

    [with through] To carefully go through a set of objects, or a collection of information, in order to find something.

  5. 5

    datedTo move data records up in memory to make space to insert further records.

noun

  1. 1

    An act of sifting.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Sift in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpasser, tamiser (to sieve or strain (something)), éparpiller, disséminer (to separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving)
Germansieben (to sieve or strain (something)), sichten, durchgehen (to examine (something) carefully)
Portuguesediscernir, cindir (to sieve or strain (something)), peneirar (to separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving), examinar minuciosamente (to examine (something) carefully)
Spanishtamizar, cerner, cernir, ahechar, cribar, acribar (to sieve or strain (something))

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does sift come from?

From Middle English syften, from Old English siftan, from Proto-West Germanic *siftijan.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after sift