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\n \n Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 27, 2024 is:\n \n

\n glean • \\GLEEN\\  • verb
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To glean is to gather or collect something bit by bit, or in a gradual way. Glean can also be used to mean \u201cto search (something) carefully\u201d and \u201cto find out.\u201d

// Neil has a collection of antique tools gleaned from flea markets and garage sales.

// They spent days gleaning the files for information.

// The police used old-fashioned detective work to glean his whereabouts.

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\n Examples:
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\u201cNot only did procuring money to maintain her company figure in Graham\u2019s acceptance of the occasional theater job during the 1930s; perhaps, too, she thought that being associated with a successful play could bring new audiences to her dance performances. There can be no doubt that she gleaned something from each experience outside the rigorous and profoundly idiosyncratic works she created for her company, even if she learned that there were some projects she would prefer never to undertake again.\u201d \u2014 Deborah Jowitt, Errand into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham, 2024

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While it is certainly true that one must reap what one sows (that is, harvest the crops that one plants), what should be done about the grain and other produce left over that the reapers missed? Well, friends, that must be gleaned\u2014waste not, want not, after all. It\u2019s a finicky business, too, picking through stalks and under leaves and whatnot. When it was first used in English in the 14th century, glean carried both the sense of \u201cto gather grain or other produce left by reapers\u201d and the more figurative meaning of \u201cto gather information or material bit by bit,\u201d reflecting the slow, gradual, painstaking work of scouring the fields. Over the years, and especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, glean has also come to be used frequently with the meaning \u201cto find out, learn, ascertain.\u201d This sense has been criticized by folks who think glean should always imply the drudgery involved in the literal grain-gathering sense, but it is well established and perfectly valid.