Definition of "comb out" []

• Remove unwanted elements (verb)
• Smoothen and neaten with or as with a comb (verb)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "Del's hand blurred out and tore the comb out of her fingers."
• "These twenty-year-interval storms comb out superfluous leaves and branches, cut out dead wood, send to the ground decayed and weakly shoots, and scrub and cleanse trunks and branches of parasitic growths."