Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To sift.
  • noun A sieve; a searce; a bolter; a strainer. See the quotation from “Notes and Queries.”

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Prov. Eng. A sieve.
  • noun [Prov. Eng.] bread made of flour better sifted than common fluor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK, dialect, obsolete A sieve.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French tamis, or Dutch tems. Compare tamine.

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Examples

  • They also made ‘tiffany cakes’ of wheaten flour, which was separated from the bran by being worked through a hair-sieve tiffany, or temse: — south of England

    Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine 2006

  • These were oblong, trencher-shaped bowls about eighteen inches long; across the trough ran lengthwise a stick or rod on which rested the sieve, searse, or temse, when flour was sifted into the trough.

    Home Life in Colonial Days Alice Morse Earle 1881

  • One of those days I am advised by the smiling voteseeker who’s now snoring elued to positively strike off hiking for good and all as I bldy well bdly ought until such temse as some mood is made under privy-sealed orders to get me an increase of automoboil and foot-wear for these poor discalced and a bourse from bon Somewind for

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • Thames (or temse) on fire, "meant that hard work and active friction would set the wooden temse on fire.

    Home Life in Colonial Days Alice Morse Earle 1881

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