- the outer layer of the seeds of grain such as wheat, which is separated from the grain before it is eatenTopics Farmingc2
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- straw (= dried stems of wheat) and hay (= dried grass) cut up as food for cowsTopics Farmingc2
Word Originnoun Old English cæf, ceaf, probably from a Germanic base meaning ‘gnaw’; related to Dutch kaf.
Idioms
See chaff in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarysort out/separate the wheat from the chaff
- to recognize the difference between useful or valuable people or things and those that are not useful or have no value
- We sifted through the application forms to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Check pronunciation:
chaff