Picture description: Wheat
Picture copyright: V.
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
If you separate the wheat from the chaff, you separate things that are of a high standard from things that are of low quality.
Chaff is separated from grain during threshing. This expression became a metaphor in the Bible to represent separating wickedness or false doctrines from the truth.
Chaff is figuratively used to stand for worthless matters.
Every year we pick our suppliers at the trade fair so that we can separate the wheat from the chaff.
A lot of phrases, such as "two-edged sword" and " an eye for an eye", are taken from the English Bible. Learning the stories behind these idioms is fun, and can help boost your vocabulary. Click here to find out now!