Other forms: culled, culling, culls
To cull is to reduce a group by killing or removing some. A badger cull, cull the herd, cull the weakest.
It is a controversial word because it makes killing sound like management, and campaigners object to it for exactly that reason. The older sense is neutral and quite different — to cull is to select or gather, which is what the Latin colligere means.
1verbcullTo reduce a group by killing or removing some.
“Farmers were ordered to cull their chickens after bird flu was found nearby.”
2verbselectTo select or gather.
“The editor culled the best letters from hundreds sent in by readers.”
cull is a reducing, or a selecting.
Old French cuillir means to gather or select, from Latin colligere, to collect. Collect is the same verb.
Proto-Indo-European
*leǵ-
Latin
colligō — gather together
Old French
cuillir — collect, gather, select
Middle English
cullen
English, today
cull
From Middle English cullen, cuilen, coilen, from Old French cuillir (“collect, gather, select”), from Latin colligō (“gather together”). a doublet of coil.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA