sieve

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sive,^[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old English sife,^[6][7][8][3] from Proto-West Germanic *sibi (“sieve”),^[1][9] and its oldest spelling is sibi, of the 8th century.^[10][6] It is cognate with Middle Low German seve, Middle Dutch seve, Dutch zeef, Old High German sib and German Sieb,^{[7][11][12][8]} and with Old Norse sef (“rush, sedge”), a plant with a hollow, perforated stalk.^{[4][8][13][14]} Barnhart, Merriam-Webster and Holthausen also compare a Serbian verb meaning to trickle or drizzle,^[12][4][8] and Etymonline, Barnhart and Köbler derive the word from Proto-Indo-European *seib- (“to pour out, sieve, drip, trickle”), also given as *seip-.^[5][12][15] Klein calls the further origin uncertain,^[16] the OED says only that the stem may be related to that of sye, to strain,^[7][17] and Partridge mentions a possible link with Latin dissipāre (“to scatter”).^[18] The stem is the base of sift.^[7][19][18] The verb is formed from the noun.^[7][5][12] Johnson (1755) derived sieve from sift, the opposite direction.^[20]

Earliest recorded meaning

A meshed utensil for separating fine particles from coarse: before 800, according to Barnhart,^[12] and in the Corpus Glossary, in the OED.^[7] Old English glossaries use it for Latin cribrum and cribellum, and a medical recipe says Ásift smale þurh smæl sife, "sift fine through a fine sieve".^[6]

Semantic evolution

From 1390, in Gower, a sieve stood for something that cannot be done or for wasted labour,^[7] and Johnson (1755) quoted Shakespeare's counsel falling "as profitless as water in a sieve".^[20] In Scotland to milk one's cow in a sieve was to waste one's labour.^[21] From before 1616 the word was also applied to a person, especially one who cannot keep a secret,^[7][13] and today a poor memory is a memory like a sieve.^[13] Sieves also figure in folk belief: witches were said to sail in them, from before 1585,^[7][5] as in Macbeth,^[20] and sieve and shears were used in divination, from 1596.^[7][21] As a container the word came to mean a measure or a market basket from before 1440,^[7] and its size was local: a peck at Covent Garden and Spitalfields, about a bushel of apples or cherries in Kent.^[21] The mathematical use begins with the sieve of Eratosthenes in 1803, translating the method's Greek name.^[7][5] From 1897 the word also covers methods of estimating numbers of primes.^[7] The verb, first syffen before 1475 and syve in 1530,^[12] is 1499 in the OED,^[7] and it added the sense of perforating in 1839.^[7]

Timeline

• before 800 – Old English sife, a sieve.^[12]
• before 1300 – the spelling sive, in Sir Tristrem.^[12]
• 1390 – in phrases for something impossible or wasted labour.^[7]
• before 1440 – a measure or holder, later a market basket.^[7]
• before 1475 – verb, to pass through a sieve.^[12] The OED's first record is 1499.^[7][22]
• before 1585 – as a boat for witches.^[7]
• 1596 – in divination, sieve and shears.^[7]
• c. 1611 – figuratively, of things.^[7]
• before 1616 – a person who cannot keep a secret.^[7]
• 1803 – sieve of Eratosthenes, a method of finding prime numbers.^[7][5][22]
• 1839 – verb, to perforate with holes like a sieve.^[7]
• 1851 – verb, intransitive, to pass as through a sieve, in Melville's Moby-Dick.^[7]
• 1897 – a method of estimating numbers of primes.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A utensil with a mesh or perforated bottom, used to strain liquids, separate coarse from fine particles or reduce soft food to a purée: She pushed the raspberries through a sieve.^{[13][4][3][11]}
2. Figuratively, a person or thing that cannot keep something in, especially a person who cannot keep a secret.^[13][7][11]
3. memory like a sieve, head like a sieve: a very poor memory.^[13]
4. A measure of fruit or vegetables, or a market basket holding them.^[7][21]
5. In mathematics, a method of finding prime numbers or of estimating how many fall in a range.^[7]

Verb

1. To pass through a sieve; to sift: Sieve the icing sugar over the sponge.^{[4][3][13][7]}
2. To separate or remove by means of a sieve, often with out: to sieve out the stones.^[4][13]
3. To examine something closely in order to pick out a part; to screen.^[4]

Word family

• sievelike
• molecular sieve
• sieve cell
• sieve of Eratosthenes
• sieve plate

Related words

• sift
• sye
• soap

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
13. ^ a b c d e f g h Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
15. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
16. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
17. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
18. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
19. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
20. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
21. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
22. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)