English · Idiom Candidate

separate the wheat from the chaff

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To distinguish valuable or useful things from worthless ones

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

phân biệt những thứ có giá trị với những thứ vô ích

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: separating wheat grains from outer husks

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

This gives the courts a useful power to separate the wheat from the chaff among the pending cases.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Equivalents & related

Near equivalent gạn đục khơi trong separate the wheat from the chaff Tiếng Việt Near equivalent scare the living daylights out of Recognized English idiom; full definition pending editorial review. English · via gạn đục khơi trong Near equivalent big and small Everyone or everything, regardless of size or importance English · via gạn đục khơi trong

Lighter cards are two steps away in the meaning graph — equivalents of equivalents, reached via the entry shown on the card.

Common questions

What does “separate the wheat from the chaff” mean?

To distinguish valuable or useful things from worthless ones Literally: separating wheat grains from outer husks

Is “separate the wheat from the chaff” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

What is the closest equivalent?

“gạn đục khơi trong” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.