From: b.scott@csuohio.edu   
      
   On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:10:01 +0100, Helen Hall   
    wrote in   
    in   
   rec.arts.sf.misc:   
      
   > In message   
   > , David   
   > Friedman  writes   
      
   >> One thing that strikes me in this discussion is that the   
   >> most common current meaning doesn't seem to correspond   
   >> to even a special case of the (apparently older) and   
   >> more general meaning.   
      
   >> If you reduced a population of animals by somehow   
   >> identifying the less desirable ones in some sense--say   
   >> the dairy cows that gave less milk--and killing or   
   >> selling them, that would be a form of culling. But most   
   >> of the examples seem to involve killing a random   
   >> selection of a wild population, in order to reduce their   
   >> numbers.   
      
   >> So it sounds like a meaning that has been swamped by a   
   >> euphemism.   
      
   > Very possibly. These things happen. It happened to   
   > "intercourse". :)   
      
   Although one sense in particular is now dominant to the   
   point of being the default,  can still be used   
   in a variety of senses.  A better example is ,   
   originally just a variant of .   
      
   There's nothing particularly euphemistic about the use of   
    to mean 'reduce a population by killing off some of   
   its members'.  Indeed, it's a natural development from the   
   sense 'select for quality', which in turn was a natural   
   development from 'gather together, collect' (as in Latin   
   , from which  derives via Old French   
    and Middle English ).  The intended result   
   of culling a herd or other animal population is often to   
   improve its overall quality, and a shift of focus from those   
   positively selected to those negatively selected is rather   
   natural in that context.   
      
   Brian   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)