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Webster 1913 Edition


Filter

Fil′ter

,
Noun.
[F.
filtre
, the same word as
feutre
felt, LL.
filtrum
,
feltrum
, felt, fulled wool, this being used for straining liquors. See
Feuter
.]
Any porous substance, as cloth, paper, sand, or charcoal, through which water or other liquid may passed to cleanse it from the solid or impure matter held in suspension; a chamber or device containing such substance; a strainer; also, a similar device for purifying air.
Filter bed
,
a pond, the bottom of which is a filter composed of sand gravel.
Filter gallery
,
an underground gallery or tunnel, alongside of a stream, to collect the water that filters through the intervening sand and gravel; – called also
infiltration gallery
.

Fil′ter

,
Verb.
T.
[
imp. & p. p.
Filtered
;
p. pr. & vb. n.
Filtering
]
[Cf. F.
filter
. See
Filter
,
Noun.
, and cf.
Filtrate
.]
To purify or defecate, as water or other liquid, by causing it to pass through a filter.
Filtering paper
, or
Filter paper
,
a porous unsized paper, for filtering.

Fil′ter

,
Verb.
I.
To pass through a filter; to percolate.

Fil′ter

,
Noun.
Same as
Philter
.

Webster 1828 Edition


Filter

FIL'TER

, n.
A strainer; a piece of woolen cloth, paper or other substance, through which liquors are passed for defecation. A filter may be made in the form of a hollow inverted cone, or by a twist of thread or yarn, being wetted and one end put in the liquor and the other suffered to hand out below the surface of the liquor. Porous stone is often used as a filter.

FIL'TER

,
Verb.
T.
To purify or defecate liquor, by passing it through a filter, or causing it to pass through a porous substance that retains any feculent matter.

FIL'TER

,
Verb.
I.
To percolate; to pass through a filter.

FIL'TER

,
Noun.
[See Philter.]

Definition 2024


Filter

Filter

See also: filter

German

Noun

Filter m, n (genitive Filters, plural Filter)

  1. filter

Derived terms

Related terms

filter

filter

See also: Filter

English

A metal filter placed on top of a glass to produce a drip-brew Vietnamese iced coffee in Lào Cai, Vietnam

Noun

filter (plural filters)

  1. A device which separates a suspended, dissolved, or particulate matter from a fluid, solution, or other substance; any device that separates one substance from another.
  2. Electronics or software that separates unwanted signals (for example noise) from wanted signals or that attenuates selected frequencies.
  3. Any item, mechanism, device or procedure that acts to separate or isolate.
    • 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:
      In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.
    He runs an email filter to catch the junk mail.
  4. (figuratively) self-restraint in speech.
    He's got no filter, and he's always offending people as a result.
  5. (mathematics, order theory) A non-empty upper set (of a partially ordered set) which is closed under binary infima (a.k.a. meets).
    The collection of cofinite subsets of is a filter under inclusion: it includes the intersection of every pair of its members, and includes every superset of every cofinite set.
    If (1) the universal set (here, the set of natural numbers) were called a "large" set, (2) the superset of any "large" set were also a "large" set, and (3) the intersection of a pair of "large" sets were also a "large" set, then the set of all "large" sets would form a filter.

Antonyms

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

filter (third-person singular simple present filters, present participle filtering, simple past and past participle filtered)

  1. (transitive) To sort, sift, or isolate.
    • This strainer should filter out the large particles.
    • 1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 5, in The Subtle Minotaur:
      “You have probably never seen anything like this before, Mr. Toler. It is baleen, or if you prefer it, whalebone, taken from the mouth of the bowhead whale. It is used by the whale to filter its food.”
  2. (transitive) To diffuse; to cause to be less concentrated or focused.
    • The leaves of the trees filtered the light.
  3. (intransitive) To pass through a filter or to act as though passing through a filter.
    • The water filtered through the rock and soil.
  4. (intransitive) To move slowly or gradually; to come or go a few at a time.
    • The crowd filtered into the theater.
  5. (intransitive) To ride a motorcycle between lanes on a road
    • I can skip past all the traffic on my bike by filtering.

Synonyms

  • (to sort, sift, or isolate) to filter out (something)

Translations

Related terms

Anagrams


Danish

Noun

filter n (singular definite filtret or filteret, plural indefinite filtre)

  1. filter

Inflection


Dutch

Pronunciation

Noun

filter m, n (plural filters, diminutive filtertje n)

  1. filter

Anagrams


German

Verb

filter

  1. First-person singular present of filtern.
  2. Imperative singular of filtern.

Hungarian

Etymology

From German Filter, from Medieval Latin filtrum.[1]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): [ˈfiltɛr]
  • Hyphenation: fil‧ter

Noun

filter

  1. filter (any device that separates one substance from another)
  2. cigarette filter

Declension

Inflection (stem in -e-, front unrounded harmony)
singular plural
nominative filter filterek
accusative filtert filtereket
dative filternek filtereknek
instrumental filterrel filterekkel
causal-final filterért filterekért
translative filterré filterekké
terminative filterig filterekig
essive-formal filterként filterekként
essive-modal
inessive filterben filterekben
superessive filteren filtereken
adessive filternél filtereknél
illative filterbe filterekbe
sublative filterre filterekre
allative filterhez filterekhez
elative filterből filterekből
delative filterről filterekről
ablative filtertől filterektől
Possessive forms of filter
possessor single possession multiple possessions
1st person sing. filterem filtereim
2nd person sing. filtered filtereid
3rd person sing. filtere filterei
1st person plural filterünk filtereink
2nd person plural filteretek filtereitek
3rd person plural filterük filtereik

References

  1. Tótfalusi István, Idegenszó-tár: Idegen szavak értelmező és etimológiai szótára. Tinta Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 2005, ISBN 963 7094 20 2

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From French filtre

Noun

filter n (definite singular filteret or filtret, indefinite plural filter or filtre, definite plural filtra or filtrene)

  1. a filter

Related terms

References


Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From French filtre

Noun

filter n (definite singular filteret, indefinite plural filter, definite plural filtera)

  1. a filter

References


Serbo-Croatian

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /fǐlter/
  • Hyphenation: fil‧ter

Noun

fìlter m (Cyrillic spelling фѝлтер)

  1. filter

Swedish

Noun

filter n

  1. A filter.

Declension

Inflection of filter 
Singular Plural
Indefinite Definite Indefinite Definite
Nominative filter filtret filter filtren
Genitive filters filtrets filters filtrens