Filter \Fil"ter\, n. [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.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Filter \Fil"ter\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Filtered; p. pr. & vb.
n. Filtering] [Cf. F. filter. See Filter, n., and cf.
Filtrate.]
To purify or defecate, as water or other liquid, by causing
it to pass through a filter.
[1913 Webster]
Filtering paper, or Filter paper, a porous unsized paper,
for filtering.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Filter \Fil"ter\, v. i.
To pass through a filter; to percolate.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Filter \Fil"ter\, n.
Same as Philter.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
filter
n 1: device that removes something from whatever passes through
it
2: an electrical device that alters the frequency spectrum of
signals passing through it
v 1: remove by passing through a filter; "filter out the
impurities" [syn: filtrate, strain, separate out,
filter out]
2: pass through; "Water permeates sand easily" [syn: percolate,
sink in, permeate]
3: run or flow slowly, as in drops or in an unsteady stream;
"water trickled onto the lawn from the broken hose";
"reports began to dribble in" [syn: trickle, dribble]
WordNet (r) 2.0
87 Moby Thesaurus words for "filter":
bleed, bolt, butterfly, cheesecloth, clarifier, clarify, clean,
clear, cloth, colander, condense, cradle, cribble, decrassify,
depurate, diffusing screen, discharge, distill, drain, dribble,
drip, dripple, drop, edulcorate, effuse, eliminate, elute, emit,
essentialize, exclude, excrete, exfiltrate, extract, extravasate,
exudate, exude, filtrate, frosted glass, frosted lens, gauze,
gelatin filter, give off, ground glass, gurgle, leach, lens hood,
light filter, lixiviate, lixiviator, membrane, ooze, pass through,
percolate, percolator, purifier, purify, rectify, reek, refine,
refiner, refinery, riddle, rocker, run through, screen, seep,
separate, sieve, sift, sifter, smoked glass, spiritualize, spurtle,
stained glass, strain, strainer, sublimate, sublime, transude,
trickle, try, weed out, weep, winnow, winnowing basket,
winnowing fan, winnowing machine
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
filter n. [very common; orig. {Unix, now also in {MS-DOS}] A
program that processes an input data stream into an output data stream
in some well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except
possibly on error conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a
`pipeline' (see plumbing). Compare sponge.
Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)
filter
1. (Originally Unix, now also MS-DOS) A program that
processes an input data stream into an output data stream in
some well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except
possibly on error conditions; one designed to be used as a
stage in a pipeline (see plumbing). Compare sponge.
2. ({functional programming) A higher-order function which
takes a predicate and a list and returns those elements of
the list for which the predicate is true. In Haskell:
filter p [] = []
filter p (x:xs) = if p x then x : rest else rest
where
rest = filter p xs
See also filter promotion.
[{Jargon File]
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
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